


Imperfect Girl

by linkzeldi



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Blood, Domestic Violence, F/M, POV Fukawa Toko, dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:22:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 67,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25697242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linkzeldi/pseuds/linkzeldi
Summary: It's easy to love someone, but difficult to continue doing so. Just like it's easy to kill someone, but difficult to keep killing them. Fukawa Toko thinks her life is a love story, Togami Byakuya is too busy trying to solve a murder mystery.
Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya, Ikusaba Mukuro/Naegi Makoto
Comments: 57
Kudos: 35





	1. Enclosed Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say every time a famous detective rides a train, a murder will happen. Toko gets dragged into karaoke and spending time with her new friends, and a murder happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BLANCHE = Flashback Scene  
> ROGUE = Bloody Scene  
> NOIRE = Progresses The Story
> 
> Warning for animal death this chapter (in the Rogue section) and mentions of domestic abuse sprinkled throughout the chapter.

_“In this room, you are not allowed to love anyone.”_

  * From Takatsuki Sen’s ‘The Black Goat’s Egg’



**BLANCHE**

Fukawa Toko was in love with love. Nobody loved her, in fact, they all hated her, but she just found the concept fascinating.  
  
No, not just fascinating, all engrossing. It was the feeling of reading a book so good you forget the rest of the world. Toko did not just read about love, she wrote, filled pages of her novels with what she imagined love to be like. 

She lived chasing after the concept of love.  
Her first love letter was posted on a bulletin board at school for all the boys to laugh at her.  
Her first date asked her out as a joke, but Toko didn’t really get the joke.  
She never received chocolates on Valentine's day.  
Not even obligation chocolates from friends.  
She didn’t have any friends.  
Yet, she still loved by chasing after that love. One day other people’s feelings stopped mattering so much to her. It wasn’t about being loved, but being in love. She wanted to live giving her love to others. She wanted to live in love, as if love was a place, an enclosed space, somewhere filled with the safety and comfort she had never known.  
  
The more she enclosed space with love, the more she didn’t want others to intrude upon her space.  
Toko loved others from afar.  
Toko stalked others, also from afar.  
She loved boys but she couldn’t really stand to be around them, they were smelly and mean. Claustrophobia, an extreme and irrational fear of enclosed spaces. What made Toko the most claustrophobic was having to share spaces with other people, the closer she got to another person the more she felt like she was being locked away in some small, damp, place. That was why she decided love was something better done from afar. She could love someone following them from six steps behind. 

Her latest victim.  
Her latest lover.  
Togami Byakuya.  
She wasn’t a stalker this time, because stalkers were afraid to confess their feelings. They stalked out of a fear of rejection, not a love of love. She fell in love with a boy, got rejected, and decided she still loved him anyway on the first day of school.  
  
Togami Byakuya stood behind the school with her. If she had to describe how he carried himself “beautiful people are like silent statues.” A tall boy stuffed into a suit. When she first spotted him he stood as far away from others as possible (just like her). His eyes were such a pale blue they were practically frozen.

She caught a cute boy’s eyes and went blind.   
Love always took her violent, like an ice pick to the heart. 

As a writer, Toko tended to notice small details about people. Togami always stood to emphasize his height over others, he seemed massive, but he was full of small ticks like fiddling with his cufflink when he thought no one noticed. He was a bit like a little kid trying to look more adult. She liked that. He had long, piano-playing fingers, she liked that too, and wanted to kiss them. 

She murmured a confession, twiddling her fingers, and he watched with a quiet expression as she did. She stood there for a little while, like a failed comedian waiting for the punchline to drop (for Toko the punchline usually hit her in the gut).  
A love letter tacked to the confession board.  
Her first date only ever asked her as a joke.  
Never receiving chocolates.  
She wondered how she would be rejected this time. 

“I can’t love you because as a representative of the Togami Household, I’m not allowed to take suitors or ever marry.”  
  
He was just honest with her.  
  
“So, you’re saying you love me but your family is getting in the way? It’s a forbidden love? Loving me would mean giving up your everything, but I am your everything…!”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I see. To keep me safe from your tyrannical father who would never approve of me you have to pretend you don’t love me.”  
  
“I just said, no.”  
  
“Every day we’re apart is suffering for you, but you’d endure hell just to keep me safe.” 

“Every moment we’re together is suffering for me! You’re making my life a living hell right now! Please, leave me out of whatever love story you’re writing.”  
  
She felt refreshed to be rejected by someone so honest. He got flustered easily, and the emotions he tried to hide showed clearly on his face. His face was red, not with love, or embarrassment, but with anger. She still thought that color looked good on him.  
  
Togami caught his breath and calmed down.  
“What exactly do you love so much about me?”  
He asked out of the blue.  
Blue eyes, they stared at her with a childlike curiosity. He looked at love like it was something inscrutable to him like he didn’t recognize the shape or form.  
  
“Everything about you, Byakuya-sama.”  
  
“Using my first name, you’re a rather impudent one.”  
  
“And you’re about to say you like impudent women! See, we’re so in love with each other we finish each other’s sentences.”  
  
“I was not going to say that. You do not have permission to finish my sentences. You should not even talk out of turn.” Togami flustered, and then his red expression cooled to blue. “I just wanted to know, what specifically.”  
  
“Well, umm… you know…” Toko brought her two hands to meet in the middle of her, placing the pads of her fingers together. “It’s because you’re you, right! You’re so you. You’re the person I love.”  
  
Her first love ended in rejection, but it was the kindest rejection she had ever received. 

_Togami didn’t laugh at me. Togami didn’t pin my letter to the bulletin board. Togami didn’t ditch me on a date I spent three nights planning. This is… this is…_  
  
Her first love ended. Her second one began. She was sure Togami would be her third, and her fourth as well. She would continue to love Togami Byakuya - from the bottom of her empty heart.   
  


**NOIRE**

Fukawa Toko was a serial killer.  
“That fact is irrelevant to my love story.” She finished the narration, muttering to the inside of her elbow as she kept her head tucked into her arms, the perfect position to nap at her desk. 

She supposed she should be grateful she was not in a prison cell right now. However, she was stuck in a classroom, a cramped space filled with other people and that felt like the same thing to Toko.  
  
Fukawa Toko was scouted her first year of high school to attend the most prestigious school in the country as the Super High School Level Writing Prodigy. She wrote books. She wanted to write out her feelings. She had a lot of feelings. She wrote a lot of books. It wasn’t that big of a deal to her, she didn’t know why they had given her a title. Toko accepted the title anyway when she heard that there was no attendance requirement at this high school.  
  
After being proclaimed a genius her life did not get any better or worse. She still only left her room about once a week. Alone in her room, she was locked in a box. At school, she was locked in a box with other people. She hated both but preferred the former because the latter made her claustrophobia infinitely worse.  
  
Everywhere made her feel cramped if she was being honest. The only space that was big enough for her was the fantasies born within her own mind. In those fantasies, she and Togami were the only two people on earth.  
  
In general, Fukawa Toko was bothered by the fact that other people existed.  
They were loud and annoying, and…  
  
“Fukawa-san. Hey, Fukawa-san?”  
  
A polite boy reached forward and tapped his fat finger on her round glasses. She was a fish inside a bowl, and that kid just had to tap the glass. A girl standing next to him with a strict expression looked ready to scold him for ignoring the ‘do not tap on the glass’ sign. 

“Who are you again?”  
  
He had a face that would have easily gotten lost in a crowd. Sandy brown hair, terrible bedhead, dressed like he put no thought into his clothing at all. Funny, she remembered the names of fictional characters just fine but had forgotten his name. His only memorable detail was his eyes, crisp, clear, green, like chlorinated pool water.  
  
She thought he might call her rude, or anti-social for forgetting his name. He just laughed it off. “I guess it’s kind of weird to expect someone to remember me, Mr. Normal Guy. You remember Ikusaba-san, right?” 

“It’s normal to expect that. You talk to her every day.” Ikusaba had a distinct way of speaking. Sharp, quick, like a stab.  
  
“I talk to everyone, every day.”  
  
“That’s the problem,” Toko grumbled without lifting her head.  
  
“What’s wrong with wanting to be everyone’s friend?” Makoto asked, suddenly stricken by panic.  
  
“It j-just makes you desperate for attention. Not a good look on you,” Toko said, hoping her unpleasantness would make him go away.  
  
“I never considered myself a good looking guy, anyway.” On a scale of one to ten, he was a five. “I’m sorry for being so desperate, I just really want to fit in because you’re all so special and I’m just normal.” 

What was wrong with this guy? The more she insulted him, the nicer he got.  
  
“You’re weird, Naegi-kun,” Ikusaba muttered.  
  
“Murakami-sensei said what makes us the most normal is knowing that we’re not normal,” Toko never missed an opportunity to quote a book.  
  
“Wait, what’s weird, and what’s normal? You’re all so much smarter than me it makes my head hurt trying to keep up with everyone.” Naegi Makoto loved others a lot more than he loved himself, and he always felt he was one step behind others. “It’s like a murder as a convenience store, only the murderer is wearing rollerblades.”  
  
That analogy made no sense at all. A normal guy who said weird things.  
  
“P-please stop making so much of that noise with your ugly disgusting mouth.”  
  
“That’s just called talking,” Makoto said, chipper.  
  
“I remember both of you now, Mr. Normal Pants and the Terrorist. What a happy couple of idiots. I hope you both jump off of a mountain and drown yourselves, and only one of you comes back.”

“Are my pants too normal?” Makoto asked, looking down at his pants. “Should I wear leather pants or something?”  
  
Naegi Makoto the Ultimate Lucky Student. He won the lottery and got to attend a school full of rich talented kids.  
Ikusaba Mukuro was the ultimate Soldier. Three years ago she ran away from home to join a rogue terrorist cell in the middle east called Fenrir. Her time with that cell was marked in a tattoo of a wolf on her left hand Toko had spotted one of the few times she had her gloves off.  
  
Naegi Makoto always had somebody next to him. He was a sheep. He needed somebody to hold his hand, like a little kid. She was a wolf. They were the two most incompatible people in the class. She hoped, they would eat each other and stop bothering her.  
  
“Hey, you shouldn’t describe Ikusaba-san like that. It’s rude.”  
  
“But, I am a terrorist,” Mukuro said, not taking offense.  
  
“Ex-terrorist. That’s what you were in the past. Now you’re our friend. Besides, it’s not like she ever hurt anybody we know.” Makoto had a really normal way of thinking.  
  
“If she’s going to kill me can she get it over with already?”  
  
“Um,” Makoto got excited and waved his hands around. “It’s just a normal conversation, nobody’s going to die or anything.”  
  
“You d-don’t know that. C-conversations are scary. People are scary!” And Toko was paranoid. 

She wanted to be left alone.  
(Please don’t leave her alone).  
She always disagreed with herself.  
(It’s what happened when you were two people). 

“We just came to ask if you wanted to eat lunch with us,” Makoto picked up two lunch boxes in his hand, wrapped up in cloth napkins with bows at the top, “You know like… the lunch club!”  
  
“The breakfast club,” Mukuro said.  
  
“Yeah, but we’re eating lunch together - not breakfast.” 

“Since when have you been eating lunch with Makoto? Is he your next victim. He does have that ‘first-person-to-die-in-a-horror-movie kind of feel to him.”  
  
“It’s not a big deal that we eat lunch together.”  
Makoto ignored what she said, to be nice.  
  
“We’re friends,” Makoto said.  
“We’re not friends,” Mukuro said. 

It seemed like there was some miscommunication here. It was a common trope in love stories. Toko did not really care about other people’s love stories though, she was busy with her own.  
  
Makoto started telling her the story anyway, and Toko made a noise like a strangled cat. Dealing with other people really was so suffocating, like slowly running out of oxygen in the box you were trapped in.

  
  
**BLANCHE**

“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a normal story.”  
  
Makoto began his story like that.  
Mukuro interrupted him and began talking over him.  
He looked to Mukuro, with such…  
Pure.  
Innocent.  
Clear.  
Clean.  
Green eyes.  
Like chlorine.  
  
A truly casual air. A scene that takes place in everyday life. The kind of status quo her sister would find boring. A classroom at lunchtime. The sun hiding behind the clouds. An-all grey sky. A colorless sky. A girl staring out the window through colorless eyes. A girl who ate alone on the first day of class.  
  
Two people were telling this story and they disagreed.  
It was love.  
No, it wasn’t.  
  
She didn’t hear his voice at first when it called out to her. His voice was just a part of the noise made by the crowd. _Wow, I can’t believe you knew Sayaka before she became famous._ Dude, she remembered your name. You have to confess. **N-no way, I’ll just look creepy.** _You’re right she’s way out of your league._ That’s why you gotta do it now before she realizes how much better all the other guys are than you. **Now you guys are just being mean!** **_  
_**

Her classmates were all so lively, and Mukuro was as quiet as a corpse.  
She had to put up with a daily high school life until her sister needed her again.  
  
“Hey!” A boy called out to her. “My friends are all being annoying. Do you mind if I eat with you?”

Mukuro knew she had trouble expressing emotions on her face, but she had feelings too. At the end of the day, she was a high school-aged student. She occasionally had them too - moments when she got conscious of the other sex.

She had no idea why this boy was talking to her.  
Makoto took her silence as a rejection. “Eh?”  
  
“No, not really. I don’t care one way or the other.” Mukuro was, alone. If this boy sat next to her she would still be alone. “No one usually asks to eat with me, though.” 

Makoto took that as an invitation to sit next to her.  
He chatted her up, talking about a bunch of normal subjects.  
He reached forward to grab his chopsticks, and his hand brushed against hers. His hand was smaller than she thought, his skin soft, unblemished, like a child that had been spoiled. That moment of touch made her face heat up.  
  
 _This is not loving,_ she thought.  
 _This is just normal,_ she told herself.  
Mukuro had never been normal for a single moment of her life.  
  
“Your lunch looks tasty. Did you make it yourself?”  
  
“Yeah. Can’t fight on an empty stomach.” 

At her casual mention of violence, Makoto just kept talking. “I expect nothing less from a talented person. I can’t do anything, so my mom made this for me. My sister made this part here.” He lifted his chopsticks and touched a Weiner cut to look like an octopus. “I can give you one if you want.”  
  
“Your sister?” Mukuro leaned in with interest. “Is that okay? Your sister made that for you with love.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve got plenty.”  
  
Makoto stabbed the cut wiener with a toothpick and offered it for her. Mukuro misinterpreted. She leaned all the way across their two desks pushed together. She bit it off the toothpick with her teeth, as a wolf might. He looked at her surprised and brought his hand close to touching the part where her lips had accidentally brushed his fingers. 

It wasn’t anything special, it was just normal.  
Mukuro didn’t want to get the wrong idea because she was unused to this kind of closeness.  
  
“So… your sister didn’t show up to the first day of class.”  
  
A knife in her heart. She was dying, dying, dying.  
Please don’t talk about her. Don’t talk about Junko.  
She wanted to go on living like Junko was still…  
  
“You look really worried about her. You must love her a lot.”  
  
Mukuro thought if she stayed quiet the boy would walk away.  
He just.  
Kept.  
Talking.  
  
“This is super embarrassing to say, but I have a younger sister too. She’s irreplaceable to me, so I think I understand how you feel.”  
  
“You don’t…”  
  
“Yeah, I do.” Makoto dropped his chopsticks in his rice. This time it was he who reached across the table, to tuck the raven hair that usually framed her face and hid her eyes, behind her ear on one side. “I think you’re just normal.” He said, still touching her ear. He quickly drew his finger back and backpedaled. “Ahh, umm, I don’t mean you’re average or boring. It’s just even though you’re this amazing person I feel like I can talk to you.” 

“Huh?”  
  
“I mean the reason you’re always quiet is just that you’re socially awkward, right?”

The school was the worst battlefield of all.  
If she was shot at.  
If she was charged with a knife.  
She wouldn’t feel anything.  
Words were more explosive than bullets and sharper than knives.  
They made her feel things, again.  
She felt ashamed. She felt, so much lesser than all her classmates.  
She was uglier, stupider, and she didn’t know what to do unless her sister gave her orders.  
She didn’t know how she was going to survive on this battlefield without Junko.  
  
“To be honest when I heard we were getting a girl called the Ultimate Soldier, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. You don’t look scary to me, though, just scared. That’s why I thought I should go up and talk to you because I’m the least intimidating person on earth.”  
  
“That’s not your job,” Mukuro said, firmly.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“To talk to me because you pity me. It’s not your job.”  
  
Mukuro picked her words like she picked her knives, with exactness and sharpness.  
  
“What if I want to talk to you because I like you?”  
  
He smiled at her. It was the kind of smile you could go on about in prose about how warm, or welcoming it was - it was just a normal smile. All the same, she wanted to see Makoto smile again, while he called her a normal girl.  
  
“I make lunch for my sister every day,” Mukuro finally joined the conversation.  
  
“You make boxed lunches? Do you think you could make one for me?” Makoto asked, pointing at himself as a joke.  
  
“...Sure.”  
  
Makoto flailed his hands in the air. He was so full of life, and Mukuro was just dead. “Nonononono! Please don’t! I was just kidding! I’m not worth the trouble-”  
  
“I don’t care,” Mukuro said. She truly didn’t. About anything other than her sister. “It gives me something to do.”  
  
“You fuss over your younger sister just like me. You really are just a normal girl, huh?”  
  
“No, I’m not…”  
  
“You know what you could be in the future with your skillset?”  
  
“A murderer…?”  
  
“A housewife o-or maybe, the Super High School Level Big Sister!"   
  
A girl sat in the classroom. A girl sat far away from everybody else. A boy suddenly walked up to her and started talking to her. A painful, and awkward conversation, full of long pregnant pauses. _You’re normal._ Makoto said to her. _Talk to me tomorrow and the next day. Call me a normal girl again._ Ikusaba Mukuro did not want a love story, _I’m fine with a normal, boring story._

  
  


**NOIRE**

  
“That story wasn’t cute at all! I should tell you guys about my first meeting with Togami-sama.” 

So Toko told the story briefly. It went like this. The first time they met, Togami asked her if she was really the author Fukawa Toko, looked over her once as if appraising, and then sighed with disappointment. He then picked up the novel “So Lingers the Ocean” which had been authored by her and threw it away in the trash right in front of her. 

“Um, Fukawa-san, are you okay?” Makoto asked.  
  
“Why do people always ask me if I’m okay when I tell that story?” Toko turned her attention back to Makoto. “Your-realize how stupid you are calling her a normal girl, right? Nobody’s normal.”  
  
“I’m normal,” Makoto said.  
  
“You’re nobody.”  
  
“Well, okay then.”  
  
“She’s the most un-normal person here. She probably skins cats or something when you’re not looking.” Toko did that once. Toko was a bit of a hypocrite. Toko remembered that skinning cats was difficult because scissors have a hard time cutting through animal fat. Toko’s memories of that time were a blur like they happened to someone else.  
  
“Hey, don’t say that about her! That’s not nice!” Makoto finally looked offended.  
  
“So I can say whatever I want about you, but if I say something about your friend you start acting all butt hurt?”  
  
“It hurts my butt a lot when people are mean to my friends.” Makoto shrugged. “Are you going to try some food or not? Ikusaba-san made it for you. You should try being considerate for once.”  
  
Toko thought she was considered. She just always considered herself first. “Th-this is probably poisoned with laxatives. When I eat, I’ll run to the bathroom. You both will laugh b-because you think it’s some harmless prank, and then I’ll die. You’ll call an ambulance, but my death was so embarrassing the EMT will just laugh at me.”   
  
“You’re uh, really creative, huh?” Makoto said after listening to that whole story.  
  
“Thanks, I’m a writer.”  
  
Makoto had a look in his eyes that said _just be nice_ as he listened to her. She preferred being hated to that look.  
  
“Why don’t you tell her why you’re really doing this-” Mukuro said, cutting in.  
“Hah! I knew it! N-nobody would want to talk to me without ulterior motive. I m-mean have you met me? I’m literally the worst. I’m an author so I’m using the word literally correctly here, I am the most hated human being alive.” 

“We just thought-”  
  
“We’re not we-” Mukuro corrected.  
  
“Well, Togami-kun hasn’t slept in a week. I guess all the cool kids are stalking these days, but he really needs you to back off.” Makoto said, and then with his usual niceties. “I thought if you made some real friends, you wouldn’t need to-”  
  
“W-what? Someone’s stalking Togami-kun?”  
  
“Yes,” Makoto started.  
  
“You’re stalking him.” Mukuro finished.  
  
“N-no, I swear it’s not me.” Toko looked like a girl covered in blood, red-handed, going _I’m sorry, I’m not the one who killed them._ “I haven’t stalked him in over a week. I mean, I wouldn’t stalk Togami-sama, my love for him is pure. We need to do something about this! I have to protect him!”  
  
“I’m sure most stalkers think they’re protecting the person they’re following,” Mukuro said, drily.  
  
“H-hey, remember. We’re not supposed to accuse her of anything. We’re just concerned as friends.” Makoto tried to smooth things over.  
  
But, Toko did not have friends.  
She couldn’t handle people in her space. It made her itch. Her skin would break out in hives. She would itch at all of those hives until they became open, red sores on her body, and she would get even uglier. Three was too many, two was too many, she wanted to be all alone in her box.  
  
“We were thinking we could all hang out! I’m sure once everybody gets to know you better they’ll like you, so why don’t you go out to Karaoke after school.”  
  
Toko always dreamed of this.  
Friends approaching her and asking her out to Karaoke like it was no big deal.  
But with Makoto, it felt so forced.  
He was just being nice.  
She liked that Togami wasn’t nice.  
He didn’t lie to her. 

“What I need is to be as far away from others as possible. Go die, Naegi-kun!”  
  
“That’s the spirit!” Makoto cheered.  
  
“He’s going to drag you there kicking and screaming, you know,” Mukuro advised her.  
  
“I don’t just kick and scream. I scratch, and hit, and I’ll bite you.”  
She didn’t want to be a girl, interrupted.  
She wanted to be left alone.  
  
“Well, I guess I’ll tell Togami-kun you’re not going to Karaoke,” Makoto said, sounding disappointed.  
  
“Getting invited to Karaoke with friends after school like a normal girl! I’ve been waiting for this since the day I was born. My high school life is finally beginning! This is my moment of metamorphosis from book worm to social butterfly!”  
  
Toko suddenly changed her mind.  
She was always changing her mind, just like this.  
She was allowed.  
She had two brains, actually. They were shoved into the same skull. They shared the same dark, enclosed, space. Her own body was claustrophobic. 

**NOIRE**

Makoto went off to invite other people to the get-together. 

He left Mukuro and Toko alone together.  
Toko had nothing in common with a professional murderer.  
There was nothing to talk about. Toko talked anyway because she was always so full of words. “Naegi-kun, r-really?”  
  
“He’s nice…” Mukuro’s voice sounded as if it was carried from somewhere far off.  
  
“That’s about all he is.”  
  
“Boring is nice. My sister isn’t boring.”  
  
“T-talk in full sentences you damn dog. O-oh, is that the same sister who they locked away in the neurology building as an experiment? The one that screams whenever you bring her food? Wh-why is that anyway? D-di she just hates you so much she locked herself in her room to get away from you?”

There was a game Toko played.  
The game was called ‘They’re going to hate me anyway, so I’ll make them hate me more.’  
It wasn’t a fun game.  
  
She played it, anyway.  
In her household, she used to try to play the perfect girl. She thought if she could be perfect, it would make her parents a little less upset. Dropping a glass. Getting a stain on your shirt. Ever since she was young she had been observing people’s faces, and that’s why she knew they could turn hateful for the smallest of reasons. It was impossible to live in that household without getting cracked, eventually, she stopped worrying about being perfect.  
  
She provoked others on purpose so she would know where she stood with them.  
She knew that look in Mukuro’s eyes.  
The look that followed after a glass breaking. She looked like she wanted to kill Toko.

 _Ah, shit, I’m screwed._ Toko closed her eyes, knowing she had gone too far but the slap she expected never came.  
  
“Ah, is that so… It’s probably true.” Mukuro didn’t kill her. 

She just killed herself, her own feelings. Toko could understand, empathize even  
She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to be dead like Mukuro.  
But she had another self that really wanted to kill her.  
  
“You’re just a dumb bitch, following around the first person who was nice to you.”  
  
Mean, nasty words were coming out of her.  
And Toko used to be such a nice little girl.  
  
“You know he’s not doing this because he likes you. You’re a charity case. If you had any pride at all, you’d tell him to go away. I’m b-better than you in that respect.”  
  
“I guess I don’t have any pride. You are better than me.”  
  
Was she that self-loathing?  
No, that required having a self.  
Mukuro was so quiet, to Toko, it was like she wasn’t really there.  
  
Before their conversation could get much farther, Makoto barged in between them. “I invited Maizono-san. Then, when I was talking with Togami-kun about the details, Kuwata-san invited himself. I’m not good at saying no, so he’s coming now too.”

“Too many people.” Toko wanted to bash her small fingers against the walls of the box that was slowly closing around her. If she were to estimate its size, it would be the size of a karaoke booth filled with teenagers, or maybe the size of a small closet. “If you lock me in a room with too many people s-somebody is going to die for sure.”  
  
“Well just look at it this way it’s better to die surrounded by friends!” Sometimes, Makoto’s optimism was weirdly offputting. “If we all get locked in a room together we’ll have no choice but to become unlikely friends, like the Lunch Club!”  
  
“I’m not Breakfast Clubbing with any of you!” Toko said, defiant.  
  
“Well, that’s good, because it’s the lunch club and not the breakfast club. It’s totally different.”  
  
“There should have been more murder in the breakfast club. Then maybe that stupid movie would be interesting.” Toko complained, into the nook of her elbow.  
  
Toko didn’t want to be dragged into someone else’s love story.  
Secretly, her eyes hidden beneath black bangs.  
She looked to Mukuro, and then to Makoto.  
She had no idea what Mukuro was thinking.  
Falling for a normal boy doesn’t make you lonely.  
A killer.  
Makoto drifted away again to talk to Sayaka about the upcoming outing.  
Toko caught a brief glimpse of Mukuro, smiling to herself.  
It was like a killer’s knife being drawn out slowly, the way she smiled behind Makoto’s back.  
Unrequited love.  
It’s so tragic.  
Romeo and Juliet. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The little mermaid.  
Someone was going to die.  
Toko knew that before the first murder even happened.  
She closed her eyes until then. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t in the box. She was somewhere else. She was in a dream. She would sleep until Karaoke. She wanted to sleep through Karaoke, and the rest of her life, but sadly that wasn’t an option.  
  


**ROGUE**

Toko hated animals traditionally considered cute: puppies, kittens, little ducklings. Cooing the words “so cute, so cute” was just an act of condescension. She loved animals most considered ugly, especially insects. There was a beauty in the small and delicate strings a spider could weave.  
  
But it’s not like she killed cats because she hated them. In the past, she searched hours through alleyways where people dumped their garbage. A small thing rubbed up against her leg. She looked down and met its eyes, then its thin lips curled back in a smile. Toko’s entire body went stiff. She felt like a puppet whose strings were pulled tight, and like a puppet she had no idea who was holding the strings.  
  
There was a string tied around her right wrist, and one around her left one. She was the left half of one girl, and the right half of another lazily stitched together. The left and right sides of her brain were incompatible with one another. That was why the strings holding her together were a lot looser than they were for normal people. She felt a stitch pop. She felt herself coming undone.  
  
At that moment reality blurred. She could not recall correctly if she held her scissors in her right hand or her left hand. All she remembered was that her hand felt wet. She looked down to see blood.  
  
Oh.  
  
The first time she held a pair of scissors she held it the wrong way. She held the scissors by the blades, rather than the handles and accidentally cut herself.  
  
She squatted down staring at her bleeding hand. She would have to clean it because in her dirty, trash-filled home it would get infected for sure. As she sat there wondering what to do, because nobody had ever so much as put a bandage on one of her bleeding fingers before the at crept up to her. A small red tongue licked the blood from her fingers. 

The cat was trying to comfort her.  
Abandoned when she was only a kitten, just like her.  
Ring, ring.  
Ringing in her ears.  
It was the sound of laughter. She didn’t know who was laughing.  
  
The cat was stabbed over and over again. Toko did it without looking the cat in the eyes because she couldn’t stand to see the face of suffering. Quicker now. Do it quickly.  
  
Her hands traveled to the cat’s neck, she squeezed until it snapped. The sound was like, a string that was drawn very taut snapping suddenly. Like this. _Snip._ Then, she remembered something else.  
  
That thin, huge cat, she held in her hands had a swollen stomach. When she cut it open from breast bone to the belly button with her scissors, the malformed babies toppled out of the womb.  
  


**ROGUE**

Kuwata Leon’s singing sounded worse than the strangled noise of the dying cat. That’s why she was thinking of that. Her thoughts, in general, tended to be macabre, it went with the whole miserable chick vibe. 

They had rented out a small karaoke box. (Togami had bought out the whole business when making plans with Naegi). It was one room, with a couch, wallpaper and shag carpeting from the seventies, a plasma screen television, and a microphone to be passed around. Toko was in the corner because that was the farthest away she could get from other people.  
  
“You’re being anti-social,” Makoto whispered while Leon was singing.  
  
“I’m not anti-social. I’m just anti-people.” Toko harshly whispered back.  
  
Leon put the microphone down. He had stopped shaving his head a month ago when he announced he was going to live like a rock star from now on. His red hair grew back uneven, wild, untamed, if Toko felt like being dramatic she might compare him to fire. 

“Boo yeah! How was that, Fukawa-san? Do you think my band’s going to be big in Japan? Wait, we are in Japan. Where’s a foreign country where my band could get big in… do you think I’ll get big in Lithuania?” 

Somebody was talking to her?  
Nope, Toko didn’t hear.  
  
“Umm, you have a band, Kuwata-kun?” Makoto said. “But you don’t play the instruments.”  
  
“I’m the sex appeal!” Leon said, testing the soundproof rooms with how loud he was. “Ain’t that right, Fukawa-san?”  
  
Why did he want her attention?  
  
“I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of recovery.”  
  
“Shit, you loved it so much you want to die? That’s crazy, like some Genocide Jack Shit.”  
  
Just a reminder.  
The main character of this story is a serial killer.  
She was Toko, but the girl on the other side of the looking glass was called Genocide Jack.  
“Who’s Genocide Jack?”  
  
“You’re kidding, right? Is this a joke? Genocide Jack’s been all over the news.” 

“I d-don’t try to tell jokes. Everyone just stares at me like ‘If she’s that ugly, she should at least be funny to compensate’. It’s just awkward for everyone involved.” Toko’s beady eyes looked away. “I d-don’t watch the news, I don’t do much besides write. I barely even eat.”  
  
“You should eat. Guys like girls with a little meat on their bones,” Leon suggested.  
  
“Sh-shut up already you cannibal.”  
  
“Yeah, you need to eat for your health. We’re in our meet teens, ya know?” Makoto rubbed his chin, thoughtfully.  
  
“Can the boys shut up about meat already? What about y-you, Togami-sama? Are you concerned about me?”  
  
“You’re none of my concern. What do poor people eat anyway? Dog food? Soylent green? Well, whatever.” 

“Well, anyway.” Leon was good at being louder than all the other chatter. “Four people have been murdered! And it’s still going on! With no known suspects! He stabs them with scissors and slashes up their guts and stuff, I guess! Freaky, huh?” 

Genocide Jack’s victims all followed a certain specific aesthetic.  
They were crucified, their arms and legs pinned to the wall with scissors.  
They were most often killed by a quick cut to the neck.  
In the victim’s blood the words ‘Bloodlust Fever’ was written on the wall.  
Toko knew this because the other side of her was a serial killer.  
  
“F-four people, huh? It’s not that big of a deal. Th-they were probably all jerks, anyway.”  
  
“It’s a hell of a big deal. Serial killings are pretty rare in Japan. They’re saying it’s the second coming of the Jack the Ripper murders.”  
  
“That’s kind of scary.” Sayaka looked like she was reading her lines off of a script. The part she was auditioning for was the final girl in a serial killer movie, the virgin covered in blood who survives until the end. Her trembling was so perfect, it made Makoto immediately put an arm after her.  
  
At all of this talk of serial killers, Mukuro just looked bored. She deliberately looked away from Toko. "Serial killers are usually people you know, like friends, or family."   
  
“H-hey, guys this is kind of a bummer. I get that you’re all like, deep, troubled geniuses but do you always gotta be so edgy?”  
  
Toko just closed her eyes, as if the subject had nothing to do with her. _I’m the girl covered in blood but I didn’t kill them, Mr. officer. You gotta believe me._  
  
“Idiots who do not know what they are talking about really should not run their mouths and waste oxygen for the rest of us,” Togami spoke up.  
  
“Eh, what are you saying man?”  
  
“I hate the sound of your voice so much, it makes me want to do something disgraceful and vomit.”  
  
“What, are you hitting on me?”  
  
“I just said I hate you? How could that possibly be misconstrued as flirtation?” Togami adjusted his glasses to cover up his fluster. “The victims of this stabbing have no connection. They were young and old, male, and female. It’s not Genocide Jack, just an imitator.”  
  
“That’s plagiarism…” Toko said. “That bitch Mukuro probably went rabid.”  
  
“Hm?” Mukuro tilted her head, confused.  
  
“Um, you shouldn’t go accusing your friends of murder. It’s rude.” Naegi said.  
  
“I wouldn’t cut up a dead body,” Mukuro said, plain and simple like she was stating a fact. “Dead bodies are just things.”  
  
“Can’t we just have a little fun - without murder?” Makoto whined, ineffectually.  
  
“I bet Genocide Jack is a woman. Gloomy chicks are great.” Leon got all worked up like somebody lit a fire under him. “Like the grocery girl Osichi, who set fire to a building to see her man one more time.”  
  
Toko wanted to snip this conversation in the bud. “Togami-sama, how do you know about the Genocide Jack cases? Isn’t that a little beneath you?”  
  
“Probably because he’s a freak about girls like me,” Leon said.  
  
Togami looked at him like he was a red stain on his Armani suit. “I have nothing in common with anyone in this room. Tracking Genocide Jack is a hobby of mine. I’ve used my connections to get details only the police know.”  
  
“Why?” Toko had been sitting in the corner hugging her knees close to her chest to take up as little space as possible, this was the first time she raised her head out of her lap to look someone in the eye.  
  
“Hm. Perhaps the reason is that when reading detective novels as I grew up. I always found myself sympathizing with the serial killer more than the detective.”  
  
Toko was always trying to read the expression of others, but people weren’t clear cut like books, they weren’t even like actors in a stage play. Their faces and their words contradicted each other, in ways that didn’t make sense to her, not in the way books made sense.  
  
Yet somehow she knew.  
Perhaps, because she was always watching him.  
Perhaps, because she was always thinking about him.  
His smile was real.  
She didn’t know what was making him smile that way.  
She wanted to know.  
Always, wanted to know more about him.  
She would follow him to the ends of the earth if only he’d let her.

  
Togami's condescending, pompous, sneering, smile that twisted up his whole face unpleasantly was so precious to her. He smiled so sincerely. Togami always told her the truth.   
  
“Togami-kun, I’m going to be honest that’s a little bit creepy.” Makoto interrupted her trailing narration.  
  
“It was a joke.”  
  
“I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.’  
  
“All of my rich friends think I’m funny.”  
  
“You have friends? I didn’t know you had friends!”  
  
She started to wonder was it romantic that Togami was chasing her little secret, without knowing it was her. If it wasn’t romantic, was it tragic? Or was it just plain bad luck? If it was Togami, she wouldn’t mind telling him her secret. Then, something would be shared between him. He was the only person she ever felt comfortable around. She wouldn’t mind, sharing some small space with him. She tuned out all the other voices in the karaoke box and focused on his. 

**NOIRE**

“Hey, Fukawa-san, do you want a drink?”

Toko looked at a wine glass forcefully shoved directly underneath her nose. The red swirled around and around, coagulating like blood. She always thought red was such a disgusting color.  
  
“We’re minors. We’re not supposed to drink.” Makoto said.  
  
Somebody had gotten drinks. A couple of wine bottles. Here was how you poisoned wine without breaking the seal. Inject it through a syringe, and wax the cork after. She read that in a mystery novel once.  
  
“Why not?” Leon asked.  
  
“Because, umm… Those are the rules. The rules are the rules that are common sense.” 

“That’s not the very punk rock of you! You’re just a prisoner to common sense! Rebellion, rebellion!”  
  
“Wait, who are we rebelling against?” Makoto always got too caught up in the tides of other people. “Are people not going to think I’m cool anymore if I don’t drink?”  
  
Toko in the corner, hugging her knees looked somewhere in the fuzzy borderline between gloomy schoolgirl, ghost you’d find haunting a library, and the messy black haired possessed girl that dominated Japanese horror.  
  
She radiated “Don’t sit next to me” vibes.  
Leon sat next to her.  
Drat.  
  
“Do you know why they call it substance abuse? Because people use it to abuse themselves. Self-abuse gives them the illusion they’re in control of their own pain when they’re not.” Toko sharply lashed with her tongue, and then chewing on her thumbnail she murmured to herself. “I’d never drink a substance that made me feel less like myself.”  
  
“Whoa, that’s kind of deep.”  
  
“I’m an author, I’m supposed to be kind of deep.” 

She was mocking him, but Leon smiled like he was in on the joke. “When you’re one on one like this, it’s not so bad, right?”  
  
“Oh no.” She wanted to dump the wine on his head and extinguish him, but that would just make him redder. “I h-hate people individually, as much as I hate them collectively as a group.”  
  
“Ehhh? Is that why you’re always scowling in class with that awful expression on your face?”  
  
“I’m not scowling. I just have resting ugly face! S-sorry I’m not one of those vapid, empty-headed girls that boys can project their feelings onto like Maizono-san.”

“Huh? Why bring her up?” _  
__Because obviously you just came here to hit on her._ Toko thought.   
“I’m talking to you right now.”  
 _I really wish you weren't._ Toko thought.   
“Hey, hey, Fu! Ka! Wa! C’mon, Check it! Mic check, one, two!” 

She wondered if that was his brilliant plan. Annoy girls into liking him. Toko looked down, for he had stuffed something into her hands, a white book with an illustration that looked like somebody had splattered blood on the front cover.  
  
“W-what is this?”  
  
“It’s a book. People read them when they want to seem smart.”  
  
“R-really, I thought it was a blunt object to bludgeon you to death with.”  
  
“Hot,” Said the wannabe playboy.  
  
“P-please stop talking. Stop thinking. Stop existing.”  
  
“Do any of us exist, really? See I can be deep too if I try.”  
  
She read the title of the book. She often stared at books instead of staring into people’s eyes. The Black Goat’s Egg, by Taktasuki Sen. Toko, held the book with a certain revulsion, like blood was dripping from the pages.

“They say you can understand a person better by reading a favorite book, so I started reading this book thinking I could get to know you.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I got Naegi to read. I thought it wasn’t his taste. He just reads anything popular though, so it turns out he has no taste at all.”  
  
“I thought all the murder was kind of weird! But yeah, it was cool I guess.” Naegi gave his book report from the other side of the room to Toko’s private corner.  
  
Drip, drip.  
A sensation like holding raw fresh meat in your hands.  
Her hands were so wet mold would start to grow on them soon.  
  
“I hate Takatsuki Sen.” 

Takatsuki Sen, a best-selling horror novelist. Her debut work was titled “Dear Kafka”, it was a best seller with 500,000 copies. Many consider it to be a tribute to Kafka by the Shore.  
  
Her seventh work was titled “The Black Goat’s Egg”. It narrates the story of a son, and his mother a cold-hearted serial killer. While the son is disgusted by his mother’s depravity, he begins to realize that the same cruel impulses are budding in himself. Extremely brutal descriptions entwine with a delicate portrayal of the characters’ mental state. “She’s just a trashy horror novelist! The only reason she’s popular is no one in the whole world can read except for me.”  
  
“Aren’t you a trashy romance novelist?” Leon countered.  
  
“Th-that’s different. My personality may be trash but my writing isn’t.” Toko was not someone like Mukuro who would just rollover. She wanted to puff her chest up with what little pride she had. 

“Scars, bruises, lacerations, ugly things…

The son is disgusted by his mother’s depravity.  
  
“If people looked at them in a different light they could be beautiful. L-like Kintsugi, pottery with golden lacquer in the cracks. It becomes beautiful and has an identity by drawing attention to its flaws.

The son is disgusted by his mother’s depravity.  
The son is disgusted by his mother’s depravity.  
The son is disgusted by his mother’s depravity. 

“But, in Takatsuki’s works, ugly things are just ugly. She exploits mental trauma. D-do you know how terrible it is to write a book where an abused little girl has no choice but to become a serial killer?”  
  
The son realizes that the same cruel impulses are arising within him.  
 _I have two mothers._ _  
__Because of a mix-up when I was born._ _  
__They can both claim I’m not their real child._ _  
__B-but I…_ _  
__I resemble both of them._  
  
Leon realized he had stepped on a landmine. “I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you freak out-”

“Don’t be sorry,” Togami spoke up again. He had been somewhere else the entire night. He really did look like the past week had been hard on him. His eyes were baggy, he looked so much like a vampire Celestia would hit on him, and his mind wandered. Even crumbling, he was still an art to Toko. She wondered where his mind was. Paris, maybe. She decided to Paris. “She just has a chip on her shoulder because people are comparing her to Takatsuki-Sensei. When she made her official debut at fourteen her agent billed her as the next Takatsuki Sen.” 

  
Toko had far too many chips.  
Too many cracks ran through her.  
They were both statues. They were both crumbling.  
What joy, what utter bliss it would be to crumble together.  
  
“I’m w-way better! She’s only written seven books. I’ve written over eighty!”  
  
“That’s because you just write down whatever silly little feeling pops into your head at the time.”  
  
“I’m Togami-sama! I’m beautiful and perfect, and Toko-chan loves me. I think emotions are silly! I don’t have any! N-now, let me pause, for dramatic effect…S-somebody please turn the fan on so I can look glamorous while I pout.” 

“That’s real mature of you,” She liked to pull on his strings to see his honest reactions. If only she could find his heartstrings. “You just write down your delusional ramblings. What’s the difference between you and a crazy person again?”  
  
“H-hey, I’m not crazy.”  
 _I just have multiple personality disorder._ _  
__But that’s beside the point._  
“I’m j-just crazy for you, Togami-sama.”  
  
“That was your worst attempt at hitting on me yet, by far. I thought you were supposed to be good at wordplay.”  
  
“You take all the words right from my mouth b-by, kissing me, y-know, passionately?”  
  
“Hmph. Pure sophistry. The world has enough cheesy love lines, and silly little love stories.” Togami scoffed.  
  
“Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs. What’s wrong with that?” Leon asked.  
  
“You’re not a part of this conversation.”  
“Yeah, b-buzz off.” 

Takatsuki Sen was known as a goofy eccentric who wrote bloody horror stories but greeted her fans with a cheerful demeanor. Fukawa Toko was a shut-in who never made public appearances and was an otherwise gloomy girl who always looked like she was on the brink of death that wrote fluffy romance.  
  
Maybe, there was some room for self-reflection in the comparison between the two of them but Toko hated mirrors. When she looked into them she always saw Jack looking back at her.  
  
“It doesn’t matter if you think my writing is trash, b-because the best story I’ll ever write is my love story with you. I just want you to love that one.”  
  
“I hate it already,” Togami said, dashing her hopes. “You're not my biographer. I could sue you, you know for writing about me without my consent. The Togami name is a brand. I’ll take you to court.”  
  
“T-to get a divorce?”  
  
“Since when were we married!”  
  
“Hah,” Leon said, feeling like nobody was paying him enough attention. “You two are kind of like one of those old married couples."   
  
“Yes, the kind that strangles each other to death,” Togami said, as a dark emotion flashed in his eyes. “You kill the ones you love, don’t you, Fukawa?”

“I just heard the word ‘love’ in that sentence and I blanked on the rest.” Toko didn’t kill anybody. Jack killed people. She became more withdrawn, hugging her knees tighter. “Why do you like Takatsuki’s works so much anyway but not mine? I can’t believe my perfect man has such bad taste. If you have bad taste, you should just start liking me already.”  
  
“I prefer reality to your delusions. People die all the time, there's no helping it." 

She murmured to herself, into the scarred skin of her inner thigh she kept hidden from everybody else. Her fingers traced the grooves of the marks she had cut into her own flesh. “People fall in love all the time, there's no helping it either." 

**NOIRE**

The inability to resist one’s heritage and circumstances. Toko felt sick to her stomach. There’s a scene in the book where the serial killer slices open a man’s bully and drag him forward by his entrails like a long, wet, rope. Toko felt like that. Always, constantly nauseous even when she didn't eat any food. Even when her stomach was empty, she had a bad habit of throwing up stomach bile into the toilet on her worst days.   
  
She liked to read because books made her mind disappear to some other place, but she didn’t like the places that Takatsuki Sen’s books took her. Where was she? Where was she at this precise moment in time? She was trapped, inside of a sickly body. 

That’s right, she was still in this karaoke booth, locked in with five other students. If she locked the door and killed someone inside, then the genre of her life would become a murder mystery. 

“You don’t really want to be here, do you?”  
  
“Of course not,” Toko replied.

A shell pressed up against her ears.  
Like waves hitting the shore.  
A clear, soothing, blue voice spoke to her. Toko had never seen the ocean (she hated going too far from her house) but imagined what it would be like when she wrote her novel _So Lingers the Ocean._ People say write what you know, Toko wrote what she didn’t know.  
  
“Then, thank you for coming anyway. I know you’re a nice girl, you just don’t like to act like one.” Maizono Sayaka’s clear blue eyes reflected everything, even the parts that Toko did not want to see.  
  
“No, you d-don’t. This is our first conversation.” Toko scooted away further from her. “I’m not the kind of girl who will cling to someone nice to me just once.”  
  
“You don’t like to open up to other people do you?”  
Sayaka was leaning over her.  
Sayaka was eclipsing her like a moon.  
Sakya, the moon, and the tide, there was a relationship, a pull there. Toko’s eyes went, from her eyes to her breasts, and then back up and she realized she couldn’t look away. “I’m a mind reader, y’ know.” Sayaka seemed perfectly aware where Toko was looking. “You can’t hide these things from me.” 

She snickered. She covered her mouth with her hand to be polite.  
Her eyes weren’t smiling that much. Toko was bothered when people’s expressions didn’t match their feelings.  
  
“I’m only here because Naegi-kun would have cried and wet his pants if I didn’t show up,” Toko complained.

“Yeah. Everybody likes Naegi-kun.” She said and sighed moonily. “Naegi-kun is a really great guy.”  
  
Toko wasn’t interested in someone else’s love confession.  
  
“Ever since middle school, I wanted to be just like him.”  
  
Toko wasn’t interested.  
  
“Am I boring you?”  
  
“Y-yes. S-shallow bitches like you who have no substance to them bore me. You’re only so popular because your personality was designed by an s-some committee room of executives.” 

Toko had no idea why Sayaka was watching her so closely. Toko didn’t lie, as a personal policy. Everybody else said things they didn’t mean, but not her.  
  
“That’s exactly it. The only way I know how to be liked is to manufacture another me. To become a person without personality, and without the soul, I suppress myself so I’m agreeable to everyone.”  
  
I have to become blue.  
The idol girl said to her.  
  
“But, everyone likes Naegi-kun for who he is. I became an idol because I wanted people to like me. I became the number one idol in Japan. Every one likes me now."

"H-hang on here, I don't like you too much."

"Everyone likes me, except for you... and I don't like myself. I’m sure it’ll go on like that.” 

“Oh, boo-hoo. E-everyone likes me, and I’m p-popular, and people don’t throw trash at me and call me raccoon girl for three years just because you came to school with really dark eye makeup that one day! Cry me a river and then go drown in it with like that one guy.”  
  
“I would, but I can’t cry,” Sayaka said, and her blue eyes were dry. Almost, frozen. “Not for real, anyway.”  
  
Toko didn’t know how to to comfort others. She made a face like _why are you looking at me?_ She could write a scene where a character comforted another in one of her books, but whenever she tried to be as beautiful as her books in real life she failed. She had such beautiful words inside of her, but they came out of her mouth as ugly noise.  
  
“Have you ever felt like you’re two people, Fukawa-san?”  
  
“Y-you mean like as a metaphor or…”  
  
“I have.” She said it with a smile. Many books made her want to cry. Toko never thought another person’s smile would make her feel that way.  
  
Toko’s beautiful words failed her. Writer’s block. She couldn’t think of any words of comfort, besides the empty words anyone could say, that Makoto would say.  
  
“There’s another me here.” Sayaka pointed over her right shoulder, “Even when I get all rowdy and have fun with others, or cling to Naegi-kun, she’s still there. She watches and scoffs _who are you faking it for?._ ”  
  
“M-maybe you’re just having one of those celebrity breakdowns.”  
  
“Oh, you mean like in Perfect Blue.”  
  
“That’s the movie directed by Satoshi Kon you're referencing. The original novel is almost entirely different. And I HATE saying this but, the movie is better. The director adapted it for the medium with a clear vision about a pop star slowly losing her identity to her audience. It's relatable because, right now, by talking to you aren't I telling a story, to you my audience? Everybody has a story to tell that someone else cares about, not just pop stars. The book is just run of the mill serial killer schlock.” Toko liked to talk about books. Books were the only thing she liked to talk about.  
  
“You sure know a lot, Fukawa-san. If only you liked me as much as you like your books.” 

When Toko was younger, she used to read book after book and memorize the contents in hopes that if somebody finally decided to talk to her she would have something to talk about. “I don’t know that much, it’s just that everybody else is an idiot.”

“I’m probably going to be the same until I die because I’m perfect. The perfect girl doesn't need to change.” Toko wondered who she talked to right now - who performed the role of Sayaka. “If I die, I want to reincarnate as Makoto. I want to be able to laugh with complete innocence like him, and I want to get insecure like him and cry like him, and when I fall get comforted as he does.”  
  
“J-just because I’m an author doesn’t mean I care about your story.” Toko still felt the need to push the girl away. "Y-you're not special. I'm not going to p-pity you. I don't know who I am half the time either."  
  
“It’s okay. I can read your mind. I know what you really think.”  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
She wasn’t so lonely she needed someone to pretend to understand her.  
She always had a friend inside her head, ever since she was young.

Toko thought space was just a little too tiny. She wanted to hyperventilate. She wanted to break a window and escape. She wanted the conversation to end with Sayaka. But, she wanted to talk more.  
  
She was always of two minds when it came to these things.  
She was always agreeing and disagreeing with herself.  
Before she could speak up, form any more tricky words with her clumsy tongue Leon interjected between the two of them and spilled the bottle of wine all over her.  
  
Fukawa Toko painted in red.  
Red was the ugliest color. In a way red suited her, ugly people should wear ugly clothing. They just looked tacky when they tried to wear expensive stuff. She stared at her trembling, red fingers, and wondered where her scissors were.  
Red wine, carelessly spilled on her like blood.  
She hated blood.  
  
“Shit. Sorry. You’re not going to all Carrie on us, are you?”  
  
Toko was far too outside of her own body to care.  
Someone had left the door to the box open, and she wandered out. She left because there was no room for her in that cramped space. She couldn’t feel anger, because anger existed in the brain. There was too much of her, there were two of her, and she was always getting pushed out of herself. When there were two people in one body there was hardly any elbow room.  
  
Perhaps, it wasn’t other people who made her feel so claustrophobic.  
Perhaps, it was herself.  
Toko didn’t want to be… herself. 

“N-no…” She stuttered. “It was just an accident. Ch-children sh-shouldn’t be punished for breaking glasses.” 

  
She needed a book in her hand. She needed scissors in her hand. No, she needed a hand to hold, somebody to ground her and remind her that her body was hers. Somebody grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the others, out from the Karaoke booth, and into the bathroom.  
  
That hand saved her from drowning.  
She looked up and saw Togami attached to that hand. “You’re a mess. A disgrace, Fukawa.”  
  
“You love it.”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
There was a certain familiarity in their bickering. They were standing together in the girl’s bathroom, but when she flung herself at him he just sidestepped and let her trip and fall on the floor. She must have misread the moment, just like she misread their entire relationship.  
  
“Undress me, Togami-sama. If it’s you, it’s okay.”  
  
“It is definitely not okay. That’s servant’s work.” Togami chafed. She wondered why, he had saved her just a moment ago, only to leave her hanging like this. He reached forward and worked with Toko to get her clothes off and wipe away the wine from her body. He didn’t even look. Didn’t want to.  
  
He regarded Toko with. A certain carefulness. A certain fragility.  
  
“I know what it’s like.”  
  
“Hm,” Toko said, distant. 

Maybe, this wasn’t really happening. She had finally successfully left her body and this was one of her fantasies. In her fantasy world, Togami touched her and changed her shape into something he would desire.  
  
“Hemophobia. A fear of blood.”  
  
Togami pulled both of the bands out of Toko’s hair. Her black hair spilled everywhere. He carefully pulled at her hair and redid the braids. She was used to fierce tugging like someone was trying to rip her hair off of her scalp, she never knew it could be so gentle.  
  
“I don’t like spilled wine. I don't like messes, messy things, scattered all over the floor.” He said as he finished tying off her last braid. A memory of blood. A memory of blood flowing freely. His eyes pulsed, and the veins in the corner of his eyes bulged. His hands were trembling. “Reminds me of people I couldn’t protect.”  
  
She wondered.  
What memory he was seeing.  
Those frozen eyes looked like they were about to melt. She was convinced, he was a scared child holding onto her just for a moment. If only she was a person capable of comforting others. He let go of her hair. He let go of, whatever string was connecting them. If only Toko could touch those hands of his.  
  
“I r-really want a drink.”  
  
“Didn’t you just say-”  
  
“All the best authors are hypocrites!”  
  
“You really consider yourself the best? How arrogant.”   
  
"You think you'd like my pride more. Arrogance is your only selling p-point."   
  
"I like your pride just fine. It's you that I don't like."  
  
"Awe, w-why don't you like me?"  
  
"There's already somebody I love."  
  
"Where is she? I'll kill her."   
  
"I love myself," Togami said, recovering from whatever invisible hands had grabbed and shaken a moment ago.   
  
"Oh, I love you too! W-we have so much in common! We should start dating right away-"   
  
Togami just clapped a hand over her mouth, already done with her for the day. 

She didn’t like noisiness.  
She didn’t like boisterousness.  
Loud noises irritated her.  
She hated sharing space with other people.  
  
But on occasion.  
Like once a year.  
Or maybe just in a dream.  
It wasn’t so bad. 

If she went back and joined the party, and really tried this time nobody would die. Or so she thought. She wrongly thought so. Just like a mystery novel, the wine was drugged. Toko found herself fading into the music. She faded into the background. She faded. It was like words no longer had meaning, and all the ink was running off the page, and everything was white. It was white, and therefore it was empty. 

**ROGUE**

Fukawa Toko had one memory when she was in between consciousness and unconsciousness. She woke up just a little bit and fumbled for her glasses to see. 

Maizono Sayaka.  
She had a terrible sleeping form, and half of the blanket had fallen off of the karaoke couch. She was sleeping with a carefree face, with an expression of complete defenselessness. Toko thought, what a truly happy person.  
  
A happy person.  
A happy person.  
However, is she happy?  
  
Toko did not wake again until Mukuro shook her. Some urgency had crept into the girl’s emotionless voice. “You really need to see this.”  
  
Toko saw it immediately as she woke up. She was locked in a room with a dead body. There was nowhere else to look. 

The spectacle was just like the worshipping of some divinity.  
She had seen this countless times.  
She had woken up and seen this spectacle countless times. She had seen this sort of spectacle. Every time she was shocked, by how much blood people had inside of them. People were bags of blood. There was too much blood inside one body, and it overflowed, all the way up to your eyeballs, and began to pour out of the cracks of your eye socket. There was so much blood all you could see was red. Red, red, the ugliest color. Last month, and last-last month, and the month before that, Toko had woken up to this scene.  
  
Each time she woke up to this scene, she carved another tally mark on her leg.  
  
What she saw was clearly a work of art pinned to the wall designed to be shown to someone.  
A work of art designed to be shown.  
“Maizono Sayaka.” 

Maizono Sayaka’s body was crucified to the wall.  
She didn’t want to describe the scene in front of her. There was no meaning in describing the truth in front of her with words. It was just a massacred corpse. It was nothing but a massacred corpse. How is one supposed to describe such an absolute thing?  
  
“...” 

Both of her blue eyes, those laughing, and sharp, and watery set of eyes, were already gone. In the sockets which ordinarily housed them were instead stainless steel scissors. The blade of the half-open scissors was spread horizontally, in both sockets. They were almost to the handle, so forget the retinal muscles, the blades were almost certain through to the brain.  
  
Almost as if the killer did not want to be looked at.  
Did not want to be seen.  
Those same eyes that had reflected Toko like blows.  
  
Even though that would have been a killing blow, that was not the end.  
The neck.  
There was a string still tied around the neck. It was bent at an odd and unnatural angle, which would have been more noticeable if the rest of the body were not put on such display. It hung aloft like the strings holding the neck up had been cut. Her face was tinged red, and her eyes were bullying slightly. 

And the chest.  
As if receiving heart surgery, the muscles and ribs were cut open. Human insides were visible from there. It reminded Toko of the scene in the black goat’s egg. A scene glimpsed through her glasses that made her want to turn away because there’s nothing beautiful on the inside of people, there is just meat, and blood. Just flesh blags crammed with raw stuff.  
Stomach.  
The cut from the heart went around to the belly button. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see the internal organs as blooming flowers, spilling out of her. She tried to find pretty words to describe this scene, but it was moist, muddled, and slimy. The pungent odor reached all the way across the room in the poorly ventilated karaoke booth. Toko did not like to eat meat. Toko did not want to eat meat. The idea of eating raw meat, the blood, made her sick, disgusted. Disgust preceded fear.  
Both hands.  
They were pinned to the wall. Every finger had been snipped off from the knuckle down. They were lying on the floor at her feet. Two more pairs of scissors were stabbed through the center of her palm. As she hung on the wall, Sayaka’s body looked to be floating.  
Crucified.  
Bloodied Maizono Sayaka.  
Blood on the water. Despite the gruesome display of the body, there wasn’t that much blood except the area on the wall where _BLOODLUST_ was written in blood. It was like the body had been killed and then dissected after death.  
  
She didn’t know why.  
It was like Maizono Sayaka had been killed several times. To destroy, destroy, and then destroy a person’s body to this extent, what meaning could there be?  
Crucified.  
  
The entire floor of the room was stained red and spilled carelessly. Some parts were almost drying. Toko bit her tongue hard to stay conscious because if she fell asleep again Jack would wake up and someone else would die. Maybe, Jack had already woken up.  
  
She.  
She looked at the others standing beside her.  
However, she froze.  
Makoto looked at the scene in disbelief. He never expected this scene to be a part of his normal everyday life. He was already crying.  
Togami Byakuya, averted his eyes in disgust as if he was looking at a particularly messy scene.  
Ikusaba Mukuro did not react at all. She didn’t see a corpse, she saw nothing.  
  
And Fukawa Toko?  
Looking at the sight in front of her eyes, through her full moon spectacles, what did she think of her classmate crucified to the wall, with both eyes pierced, mouth gauged, and chest opened to the stomach, and hands stabbed through.  
She…  
She heard the sound of laughter.  
Someone was laughing.  
Happily. As if she had encountered what she had desired. As if she had gotten what she wanted. Without any trace of innocence, without any piece of joy, a peal of indescribably pure laughter. Like a bell ringing over and over again in her ears, like funeral bells.  
She didn’t know who was laughing.  
She couldn’t recognize the sound of her own voice when it was mixed with Genocide Jack’s.  
It was possible to be too close to another person, after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Books referenced this chapter.  
> Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood.  
> No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai  
> Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen


	2. Pining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A one-sided love. Isn't that basically just stalking?  
> Toko spends the entire chapter stalking Togami.  
> The mystery progresses, maybe, a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for parental abuse. Toko's childhood isn't pretty. There's also a major dissociation warning. It's in both of the "Rogue" sections, so just skim those.

_“Like mortar in a mixer._ _  
_ _Three heads melted thickly._ _  
_ _Miracles have been used up long ago,_ _  
_ _And lie cold on the concrete._ _  
_ _Killed._ _  
_ _I killed._ _  
_ _Have I killed?_ ”

-From Takatsuki Sen’s ‘ The Black Goat’s Egg’

**NOIRE** **  
  
**

Falling in love with someone was simply a marvelous thing, Toko believed.

Like Cinderella. 

You could stay kind when your wicked stepmother was cruel to you.  
You could stay clean, even when you were covered in dirt.   
Love was a light when you were locked in a dark room by your wicked stepmother to keep you away from the prince. 

When she wanted to stop moving inside the darkness of the closet and disappear, love was a reminder that somebody was waiting for her outside the closet. She gained the strength to step out. If she kept walking forward, then maybe one day she would be by his side.   
  
She wanted to be by his side.   
But all she did was follow from a distance.   
Toko comforted herself with her one-sided love. 

She wasn’t lonely.  
No matter where she went Togami was always with her. He was in her head.   
He was in the crowd. He was in the background.   
When she went to the movie theatre, he was sitting in the front row. She sat in the back row.   
When she was at a cafe, he was sitting in a different cafe down the street.   
Wherever she went she could see him, through a pair of binoculars.   
Wherever she went she could smell him, because she had stolen a red scarf from his room.   
When she was all alone she wrapped the scarf around her mouth and nose and pretended the warmth was his embrace. At night time when Togami lied in bed, she was next to him. Well, she was outside lying into the bushes, listening to his breathing through a phone she had hidden in his pillowcase when she broke in earlier, but she was with him. 

Okay.  
She wasn’t with him. 

“That’s what you get for pining all your life…” Toko finished her narration.  
  
“You’re not pining, you’re just stalking him,” Mukuro’s voice smashed to pieces her latest fantasy, and Toko came to reality staring into Mukuro’s grey eyes.   
  
Toko had a thought she often had. How did I get here? Jack and she didn’t share memories. It was like getting blackout drunk, her body moved but she wasn’t consciously aware of it. On, and off. On and off. Someone was flicking the lights in her brain like a kid playing with the light switch and it was disorienting. That’s why she didn’t know if she was the one who was stalking Togami, or if she had killed Sayaka Maizono.   
  
She had to review what she did know. Three days ago, she slipped her fingers under her skirt to check while everyone (including Leon who was the last to wake up) reacted to the corpse. Her fingers grabbed onto nothing, her scissors were gone. The only important detail about the crime scene was the door was locked, meaning it had to be either one of the kids inside or a locked room mystery.   
  
They all would have been taken in for questioning if Kirigiri Jin had not interfered. Hope’s Peak took over the investigation. That usually meant _Hope’s Peak wasn’t going to investigate it was just going to cover it up._ The same happened for a reserve student last year, Mukuro informed her.   
  
He told them all to go home. She went home. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t sleep some more. Three days passed. That’s right, Togami was taking her on a date today to cheer her up after Sayaka’s passing. Togami wasn’t aware of this. Toko had spent the last three days and nights planning her perfect date with Togami, but it only took place in her fantasy.   
  
She was going to forget all about murders and spend the rest of the day with Togami.   
  
That’s what she thought, but Togami seemed farther away than usual when she tried to follow him to school this morning. Then he skipped, and she almost lost him in the crowd. That’s how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy, of a copy. There were two Togamis and one of them was fake. You could tell the difference because one was four hundred pounds heavier.   
  
And that’s when Mukuro found her just as she was about to pass out.   
  
“I thought I would find the person who was stalking Togami if I followed him.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“If somebody was following Togami around, then there could have been a seventh person that night.”   
  
There are six suspects but it turns out none of them could have committed the crime. It was a tricky thing to write, leave open the possibility that another person could have been there that night without revealing their role to the end. All the suspicion is cast on the six most obvious suspects present, and the reveal that there was a seventh person all along is like a punch to the gut.   
  
“Isn’t that why you were stalking Togami? To try to find out if somebody besides you has been following him around,” Mukuro said, and then eyes narrowing like targets. “Oh. You weren’t thinking about the mystery at all, were you?”   
  
“I can m-multitask.” There were two of her after all. “Y-you’re third-wheeling on our date. Now scram.”   
  
“You’re not dating Togami, you’re stalking him.” 

“Stalking is a hobby best done alone.”   
  
“It’s not a hobby, it’s a crime. Crimes are best done together.” Mukuro said, and then gestured at her clothes. “Besides, I’m dressed for it.”   
  
She wore camouflage shorts; black tights, oversized athletic shoes, a long-sleeved white hoodie with the hood down practically hanging off of her, a black tank top underneath with three claw markings emblazoned on the chest as if scratched up by a wolf, and then a black tactical vest over all of it. Her hands were mismatched, they were clad with gloves, but one was fingerless so it wasn't for covering up her fingerprints. They were probably to keep a tighter grip on the knives. The other glove was a fingered, leather black glove, to hide the tattoo of a wolf on her left hand. 

“I don’t want to be seen in public with somebody dressed like that.”   
  
“You won’t be seen. That’s what the camouflage is for.” For a moment, Toko thought Mukuro was smiling at her own joke. It was probably just a trick of the light.   
  
“Why are you investigating the murder by yourself?” Toko asked.   
  
“If I don’t. Then Naegi-kun will get tangled up in it.” Mukuro sighed, like a worried older sister. “He goes out deliberately looking for trouble. He should just live his normal life.”   
  
Mukuro was distancing herself too.   
  
“The funeral is tomorrow you know. I’m s-sure now that his girlfriend is dead he’ll fling himself into the arms of the next available warm body.”   
  
“I’m not a warm body,” Mukuro said.   
  
“You could comfort him. He probably wants you to lick the s-salty tears from his eyeballs, damn dog.”   
  
“Gross.”   
  
They were the same because Mukuro couldn’t be with Makoto.   
She was a wolf, and he was a sheep.   
She would eat him if they got too close.   
So, she watched Makoto as a part of the flock.   
  
Toko could understand that. Perhaps, all she didn’t want to be a princess. She wanted to be in the same bubble that everyone else occupied. She wanted to be there with Togami. To stand by his side like it was the most natural thing in the world, and not worry if she didn’t belong. She wanted to be close to others instead of watching from afar while she stalked them.   
  
But, they were different.   
Mukuro acted for the sake of protecting someone else. She was like an obedient dog, she never moved on her own will, but always moved for someone else’s.   
Toko didn’t act. She waited for someone to protect her.   
Toko was still in that dark room, waiting for someone to let her out.   
  


**NOIRE**

She wasn’t alone, anymore. So why? Why when she closed her eyes was she cowering? Head down, knees were drawn in. Whenever she closed her eyes, she remembered a memory where she was all alone. She cried for help in the darkness. Cinderella’s prince eventually came but there was no one coming for her. He hated being close to people, but more than that she hated being all alone in the darkness… why was it so dark?   
  
“I got popcorn.” 

Mukuro’s voice dragged her back to reality. Right, she was in a movie theatre. A bloody horror movie was playing onscreen. It was exactly the type of movie she never expected Togami to watch. It was a movie about a serial killer. Of course, it was.

Mukuro grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it in Toko’s face. “If you’re too nauseous to eat, eat something salty, it helps with nausea. You get nauseous around blood, right?” 

Toko had not eaten much over the last few days. When she closed her eyes, she saw Sayaka’s body again like it was painted on the inside of her eyelids, so that’s why she kept herself awake and busy.

“Why are you here with me, instead of being with Naegi-kun?”  
  
“Why don’t you just go sit in the front row with Togami?” 

She couldn’t. She had always been in the back row her entire life. “W-wait, h-how do you know so much about me anyway? W-we barely talked before this. We’re the two most anti-social people in the class.”

“It’s not that hard. You talk about your trauma every five minutes.”  
  
“N-no, I don’t!” 

Toko said, and then five minutes into the movie. “The first date I wanted to w-watch a movie, and then talk about it passionately. I stayed up for three nights in a row thinking about it, and I ended up picking a Seijun Suzuki triple feature. ‘Tokyo Drifter’, ‘Fighting Elegy’, and ‘Branded to Kill’.”  
  
“Toko, two of those are about a violent criminal falling in love, and one of them is about a boy in military school trying to channel his unhealthy one-sided love into violence.”  
  
"You've s-seen them?" Toko stammered in surprise.   
  
“Yes, with my eyes.”   
  
“W-well, I don’t care what some dog thinks.” 

“You just said you wanted to discuss them.” Mukuro sighed. “Everyone praises Seijun Suzuki for his use of color, but I don’t really see it.”  
  
“See, what?”   
  
“The colors, I guess. They all look the same to me.” Mukuro muttered, about how she didn’t really like movies, but she was always watching them because Junko wanted somebody to watch them with. “There was one movie I liked. Old boy, by Park Chan-wook. A man gets locked in a room for ten years and plots revenge. The ending made me laugh.” 

“It’s hard to imagine you laughing.”   
  
“It’s an adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo. In the Count of Monte Cristo, the final words are ‘wait, and hope’. The count got everything he wanted in the end because he was patient enough to endure his suffering.” Mukuro was suddenly talking a lot. “I always thought that was so dumb. In Old boy, he waits and waits, and in the end, there’s no hope.”   
  
Toko stared. Mukuro’s gloved hands, curled into a fist. She was squeezing so tightly, like she was trying to crush something between her fingers, her heart, maybe.   
  
“Stupid girl… waiting, to be saved.”   
  
Toko just stared.   
  
“Sorry, I talked too much I guess.”   
  
“A-anyway, he left halfway through the first movie.”   
  
“I like this movie. I’ll stay.”  
  
Togami was supposed to be saying that line!  
  
“I don’t even want you here!”   
  
Waiting and hoping.  
Like pining.  
Locked in a room for so many years just waiting for someone to open the door.   
You wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and eventually, the wait drives you mad. 

**NOIRE**

Toko planned to spend the next part of her date with Togami at the bookstore. They would spend all day buying books, and in the afternoon the two of them would talk and argue about their book preferences in a cafe. She expected the argument. Usually, she hated all kinds of conflict, but arguing was always fun with Togami. 

This all happened in Toko’s fantasy so they were in Paris, France. Since she was young she had always dreamed about traveling to Paris. When she broke into the school records room in the middle of the night to look up Togami’s personal information she learned Togami’s mother was french. 

She wanted to read a book together with Togami one day. She was a fast reader, but she would wait for him. She would reach to turn the page when she was sure he would do, but then he’d place his much larger hand over hers and they would turn the page together.   
  
She had followed him throughout the bookstore with that fantasy in her head. She followed him, hiding her face in a book, pulling books out of the shelves to peek, and watch him through the space between books with one eye.   
  
There was always a wall between them. 

There was always something in the way, like a locked closet door.  
When she leaned her head against it and imagined there was a prince on the other side. That somebody on the other side wanted her to step out, she was able to endure the darkness.   
  
Togami sat down in a cafe next. One of the reasons Toko didn’t eat was because she overworked herself so much food lost its flavor a long time ago. She would probably gain more nutrition by ripping pages out of her books and eating those. If it was Togami offering her a spoon full of food, she would eat anything he offered her. Then, Togami would bite a cookie in half, and press his lips against hers to feed it to her. She never tasted anything like sweet happiness, she wanted all their kisses to taste like bubble gum and ice cream-   
  
“Say ah,” Mukuro deadpanned holding up a spoon. “You really should eat something.”   
  
“S-stop interrupting me! I’m having a moment with Togami-sama.”   
  
Mukuro looked behind her shoulder. “He’s over there.” 

Mukuro pointed at herself.  
  
“I’m the one talking to you, with my words.”   
  
“As opposed to what?”   
  
“You can talk with your body, I guess.” 

“D-don’t hit on me.”   
  
“I didn’t mean…” Mukuro didn’t mean that. She meant hitting, and kicking with long black heels driven into the area at the base of your spine, and kicking over and over again until the body went numb. Mukuro who was trained to resist curled herself into a ball, and just lied there like a dead dog taking it, and then. Mukuro said none of this, but her eyes said it.   
  
Togami was quietly reading one of Takatsuki’s novels as he sipped his coffee. Toko laid her head down on the cafe table. “I think Togami-sama's cheating on me with Takatsuki Sen. Why did she have to go and steal my man? What has she got that I don't get?"   
  
“You’re not... Ugh, you’re not going to listen.” Mukuro muttered quietly. “In her own world… like talking to Junko.”   
  
Older sisters sure did have it rough.   
  
“Don’t tell me you like Takatsuki, too.”   
  
“I don’t.”   
  
“Wait? You’ve read her books? I thought dogs couldn’t read.”   
  
“I read.”   
  
“R-really? Name one book.”   
  
“The Decagon House Murders. It’s a story where a group of college students is killed one by one in a trick house. They’re all mystery fans and everyone is so focused on solving the mystery the killer gets away with it.”   
  
“Did you like it?”   
  
“I thought the killer’s motivation was dumb. Doing it all for the sake of someone he loved. He probably just wanted to kill people.”   
  
“W-wait, you like mystery novels?”   
  
“Not necessarily mystery novels. I’m interested in the Shin Hohnkaku Ha school of mysteries. In those stories solving the puzzle doesn’t really matter.” Mukuro’s lip twitched. Toko couldn't tell whether the girl with the dead face wanted to smile or frown. Probably both. “When I was younger, my sister knew how the mystery was going to end and she’d spoil it for me. I’d read the books already knowing what was going to happen and not able to change anything.”   
  
Not able to change anything.   
Not even able to interact with others.   
It’s like reality is something that happens to everybody else, and you’re not a part of it.   
Where are you?   
A closet, maybe. Waiting in a closet. All your life. 

“S-so waits, somebody agrees with me? I’m n-not wrong for once?” Toko seemed shocked by that fact. “You think Taktasuki Sen’s novels suck eggs?”   
  
“All her works except her short stories, the important person to the main character was trying to protect dies. That’s heartbreaking.”   
  
“B-but you don’t have a heart?”   
  
“I don’t, but still.”   
  
Mukuro leaned all the way forward.   
No color. Her eyes. Her face. Colorless.   
No matter what happened in front of her.   
If she was beaten she didn’t bruise. If blood was spilled none of it got on her.   
She never changed color.   
Yet, looking past all that Toko thought those eyes looked somewhat sad.   
  
“People call Takatsuki-sensei a genius but she’s really like a big kid. She treats her characters like toys she can smash together to see what happens until she gets bored with them or they break. She always seems so, vibrant, colorful, in the way she describes those things, but underneath all the color there are dark emotions like unidentifiable sorrow, anger, and emptiness.” 

Toko saw a girl locked away in a room.  
Toko saw a girl who was locked away in a room so long she stopped caring what the outside world looked like. 

“It's like she's given up all hope, and just despairs about everything. That's why she wants to break everything."  
  
"Th-that was, um... that was a lot."   
  
“Sorry. I’m always talking too much.”   
  
They had left the cafe now. The conversation carried with them. Toko had never spent this long talking to another person. Mukuro was oddly gentle, for a trained killer. Mukuro was oddly talkative, for a quiet girl. It was almost like there were two sides to her.   
  
They had to duck out in the alleyway out of sight when Togami looked over his shoulder.   
  
“You’re usually so quiet.”   
  
“I’m not quiet. Other people are just louder than me.” 

“Umm…since when do you have hobbies? Or a life outside your sister?”  
  
“I’ve always had hobbies.” Mukuro sighed, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “It’s just if it’s not about you or Togami, you don’t notice…”

“Why do you think Togami is wandering around all over town today? Shouldn’t he be busy with l-like, Paperwork? What do functional human beings do all day long? All I do is write, and sleep, and forget to eat."   
  
“I don’t know…,” Mukuro said, and her voice lowering a little bit. “Maybe it’s because someone is stalking him.” 

“Y-you!” Toko’s voice squeaked, and then she clapped her hands around her mouth because she didn’t want to reveal their location. “You’re so passive-aggressive.”  
  
“Sorry…”

“You apologize too much. It’s getting annoying. Apologize for apologizing already! Why are you always apologizing…” 

“I always feel bad.”   
  
Mukuro said, being a little bit too honest.   
  
“I always do things like this.” 

They were in an alleyway now, and Toko was walking a few steps ahead of Mukuro who trailed behind her. Toko turned her eyes around slowly, and Mukuro was pulling the glove off of her left hand. The tattoo that usually adorned the back of her hand was gone, and she was wearing red fake nails over her fingernails.

“What happened to your-” Toko managed to get out before there were fingers closed around her throat.   
  
The strange part was, Toko did not even see Mukuro strangling her. She didn't even feel betrayal. It was like she had been expecting it, the hatred. She felt fingers crushing her throat, but when she looked up she saw a woman with long black hair, coarse features, and eyes that were the same color as hers.   
  
Mother.   
  
Toko did not know which mother it was. It was like the features of both mothers had been sloppily mixed. It was like half of one mother, and half of the other had been stitched together and she could see the stitch marks running through the center of her nose. 

Her mother was strangling her with her umbilical cord. That was how the other child that was supposed to be born that day died. An accident on delivery, the cord had wrapped around the baby’s neck until it broke and it came up a twisted, tangled up and deformed thing. The womb was a dark place too. There are plenty of children who died there without ever being born. Both of her mothers wished for that, and that was why they had locked her away in the closet. She was an eyesore, so they turned the lights out.   
  
She was scared. She was scared of falling asleep because it was dark. 

**ROGUE**

Wait, why am I narrating in the first person?

Nasty, stinky, smelly Ikusaba Mukuro. I was going to cut all of her fingers off for being mean to gloomy, but suddenly she stopped choking me and let go. She took a step back and held all ten fingers up in the air as a sign of surrender. I guess she can keep them for now. 

I choked. I spat up. I wheezed. I rasped. That was too many synonyms, but what do I know? I’m not a writer, I’m a serial killer. 

“Hey, the main character has a split personality is usually a twist you save for the end,” I complained. Where is my mind? Where is my mind? It’s in Fukawa Toko’s body. It’s not my body, I’m just a renter here. It’s a pretty shitty place to live, but at least the rent is cheap!   
  
“I wanted to talk to you, Jack.”   
  
“Well, no duh! I’m the cooler one. Nobody ever wants to talk to gloomy. I mean, have you met her?”   
  
“I have.”   
  
“It’s like when you buy a game boy and your little sister keeps bugging you to let them play, but when they do, they overwrite all your data.”   
  
“You play video games?”   
  
“Gloomy doesn’t, but I do! I kept asking her for a Nintendo DS for Christmas. Nintendo DS! Nintendo DS! Do you know what she got me? A stinking book! Why do bad things happen to bad people?”  
  
I got her a dead rat.  
I wrapped it up with a bow and everything.  
She hated it. She never appreciates me!   
  
“Jack.” Mukuro didn’t seem thrown off by my habit of going on off-topic rants. Just who was her sister anyway? I wanna meet her. We’d probably be best friends.  
“Are you responsible for the three victims reported in the last two weeks?”

“Do you read your mystery novels by skipping to the last page!?”

I crossed my arms. I even stuck my tongue out at her. Okay, that was a lie my tongue is always out. I bet you’re wondering how my tongue gets longer, and my teeth get sharper? The answer is when I’m in control I always file my teeth into sharp points with a steel file. Toko always gets mad at me for it. That mystery isn’t so interesting anymore now that it’s solved. See, some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved.   
  
What was I talking about?   
Oh, right, talking to Meowkuro. Nya!

“I don’t want to talk about killing. I’m a person too, you know. I have thoughts and feelings outside of Toko’s.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Sike! I’m not a person just a serial killer! Oh my god, you really fell for that.” I laughed. I laugh a lot. I laugh for all the times Toko can’t laugh. “I don’t want to talk about killing. Let’s talk about boys instead.” 

Even though we were killers we didn’t talk much about killing. We could save that for the next time we talked. Mukuro led me to an all-white room. It was the biology lab at Hope’s Peak Academy. Kirigiri Jin had taken control of the investigation of Sayaka Maizono’s murder, which meant that the autopsy was being performed in-house by the SHSL Neurologist.   
  
Mukuro pulled the white sheet back from the stainless steel table.   
Sayaka sleeping there looked like a princess. The SHSL neurologist apparently had experience in plastic surgery and had done all he could to fix the damage that had been done to her body posthumously.   
  
She looked like a doll made of wax.   
She looked, exactly as she had in life, fake.   
Look, I’m not a writer. I don’t make the words flow. I just make the blood flow.   
  
I don’t want to talk about corpses, I want to talk about cute boys! 

“So I heard you want to lick Naegi.”   
  
I said.   
I snuck up behind her and licked the side of her face as I did.   
I was friendly, like a little kitty cat.   
  
“What is with both of you and licking.” Mukuro didn’t react. She didn’t react to anything. I could stab her again and again, and again, and again and she’d just keep staring at me with the same bored expression. 

Toko complains about everything, Mukuro never complains. 

“Look, why are you here with your friendly neighborhood serial killer instead of being with him? You could comfort him right now…”   
  
“I… I can’t be with him.”   
  
“Why? You like him don’t you?” 

“.......”  
  
Eh, no way?

Mukuro stared at me with disbelief. “A misunderstanding, it’s a misunderstanding I…” She twitched suddenly. She moved by her spinal reflex. Her whole body trembled. The puppet that was usually dancing on strings, was being strangled by those same strings.   
  
It was the face of somebody who had been shot with a bullet right between the eyes. The face they make in the few seconds where they think they’re still alive before they slowly touch up and stick a finger in the hole and realize they’re dead.   
  
She couldn’t put power into her voice.   
  
“What the hell…”   
Really. What was this?   
She didn’t want to be seen like that. Speaking of which, did Toko know that people were calling them a couple behind their backs. Did she know and laugh? For Toko, the idea of being together with Togami was an impossible dream but Mukuro didn’t allow herself to dream. Didn’t even think of him that way once. What a brain dead girl.   
  
“That’s right… he-he’s just a friend? Did I not tell you sometime? He’s a little similar to Togami… ah… uwa…”   
  
She wavered.   
All of her blood suddenly flowed into her heart. Her heart started to beat again. She heard the sound of her heart beating for the first time in years. This was no good. Blood flowed into her cheeks, color returned to her face. She felt alive. She was dead but alive. The puppet was becoming a real girl, but she didn’t want that.   
Sway, sway.   
She swayed on strings.   
A bullet to the head. Exploding her brains. A scrambled egg.   
  
What surprised me was how depressing it was. I thought she would be happy, to be in love. Everything else seemed to become irrelevant for just a moment. 

“Well, do you like him?”  
  
She looked like she was in trouble when someone asked her upfront about it.   
She started to sweat and got shifty eyes like she was in an interrogation room being investigated for murder. 

“Naegi is. He’s a good person. If I was near him, I’d ruin him.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“I’m poison.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“B-because I shared a womb with her, I came out wrong, poisoned.”   
  
“Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”   
  
“You’re both kinds of annoying.”   
  
I laughed. I say all the things Toko can’t say. I care about the things Toko can’t care about. “To be fair, I don’t have much experience talking to people. The most I usually get is aaaaah, don’t stab me, blaaaah! That’s the noise they make when I stab them.”   
  


Mukuro finally found the reports of the SHSL Neurologist she had been looking for. “Hm. He said the cause of death was strangulation.”   
  
Strangled by the red string.   
How romantic.   
  
“Anyway, help me.”   
  
“With what?”   
  
“We’re moving the body,” Mukuro said, and she explained herself with one simple sentence. “My sister is a serial killer.”   
  
Which meant if there was some small chance that her sister was the one behind the random killings Mukuro had to protect her.   
  
“Hey, don’t you know killing people is bad?”   
  
Sayaka was dead.   
Like, really, really dead. 

I consider myself a professional. I have rules. Yes, even someone like me is capable of following rules. Except for that one rule. Don’t murder people. I break that one all the time.   
  
I always wear a schoolgirl uniform when I kill. I only target, beautiful, elegant young men. I always kill them with my custom made scissors. And, I crucify them after the fact and write my calling card in their blood. It’s not like I care so much about beautiful guys, or have a fetish that makes me like cutting people up. That would just be weird. My rules are a signal to others.

As a serial killer, my personal aesthetic is important.   
The serial killer Genocide Jack has rules. My rules don’t have any particularly deep meaning, I’m not that deep. I think having a character with a split personality whose other personality is a serial killer is bad writing, it’s like my entire existence is offensive. Mentally ill people aren't usually violent, you know? Just me, I'm violent. My rules are just there. They just are. When I kill I always wear a black school uniform. I always kill with my custom made genoscisssors. I always crucify the body. The victims are always men Toko would find attractive, yeah, yeah, you get it.   
  
And.   
Sayaka Maizono’s killing was inconsistent with my personal aesthetic. 

Objectively considering, my reasoning must seem insane. I get that. But, I have to follow these strict rules. If I don’t it’s like trying to disarm a bomb by just cutting the wires with my scissors at random. It might cause everything to explode, or it might cause nothing to happen.   
  
I don’t derive pleasure from killing. I kill for the sake of killing. I am the idea of a killer. When I don’t follow the rules I become racked with guilt. Worse than that, Toko will feel guilty. If I can’t think of murder as a purely mechanical procedure, I can’t kill.   
  
“Doesn’t this make you sick?”   
  
I asked Mukuro.   
  
No, she said.   
And she repeated two words she probably said a lot.   
  
“I’m used to it.”   
  
Jeez, why do I understand this girl so well?   
Maybe it’s because if I had a younger sister, I’d probably spend all my time worrying about her too. 

**ROGUE**

Toko was used to waking up with no idea where she was. She was used to missing out on huge chunks of time, and missing out on the reality everybody else got to experience one page at a time. Normal people slept half of the day. Half of the time she was awake she was Jack, so she slept three-quarters of the day, but she was an insomniac so she didn’t really sleep in all that time.   
  
Everything was happening. When she pressed her ear up against the door she could hear everything happening on the outside. She wanted to go outside. She wanted to join them, but she was locked in a dark room.   
  
“In other words, I waste a whole lot of time doing nothing…” Toko mumbled to herself as she woke up. 

Toko’s entire body spasmed, and she woke up in the most chaotic manner possible. She crashed into sleep and then crashed again down from her dreams. No wonder her head always hurt.   
  
“B-bwah! I w-wanted to wake up next to Togami, not you. Why was I asleep?”   
  
“You passed out because you went three days without sleeping.”   
  
Toko didn’t believe that.   
But for the sake of continuing the story, she pretended to go along with Mukuro’s lie.   
  
“We followed Togami around all day and we didn’t see anybody else. Why don’t you just admit you were the one stalking him?”   
  
Toko still wasn’t sure. If for example, Genocide Jack was stalking him while she was asleep then that would explain Togami’s concern. Togami usually didn’t react to Toko’s stalking of him. He didn’t even seem to acknowledge her. Sometimes he looked at her like a bug. It was so hot.   
  
“I don’t know…”   
  
“The real reason you didn’t sleep for the past three days, is because you didn’t want to fall asleep did you?”   
  
“No, I was planning my perfect date with Togami-sama!” Mukuro was confronting her directly with the reality, but Toko would still choose the delusion. “A-and! You knew I was stalking him the whole day and didn’t do anything about it. You’re a really really terrible enabler, you know that? So, if you think about it who’s Togami-sama’s really stalker here?”   
  
“You are.” 

Mukuro’s expression softened. She reached a hand out to Toko’s shoulder.   
Toko could feel the touch, between the layer of her leather gloves and the fabric of her clothing. 

“Toko-chan.” 

Have you ever looked at a mirror and thought there was another person behind it?   
Toko imagined a girl in the mirror living an entirely different life from her.   
In that world, her half-sister survived the womb. She protected her sister from both of her mothers, and instead of a weak person always relying on others who could barely take care of herself she became strong for the sake of that sister. Toko wrote that story in her head and reading it out to herself felt a little less lonely. 

Now it was like she was finally meeting that girl. That girl had reached across the impossible barrier of the mirror and touched her. Even though she was meeting someone she had imagined a long time ago, like a long-lost childhood friend, Toko wasn’t happy. Toko was never happy.   
  
Toko slapped Mukuro’s hand away. Toko recognized the disbelief in Mukuro’s face after being slapped. It wasn’t something you got used to. Especially when you’re hit every day. Mukuro’s face was so much like her own when she was on the receiving end of a slap from her mother. “I don’t n-need to follow me around. You’re just an unwanted, ugly, girl! In fact, you’re the one who’s stalking me! The only person I need is Togami-sama.”   
  
“But what if he doesn’t need you?”   
  
Shot through the heart. 

“At least I admit I’m in love! I'm going to live in love! You’re so dead inside you’re never even going to admit you maybe sort of like puppy boy Makoto. I know I have my issues but what are you afraid of? He’s the world’s most harmless omega male.”  
  
Toko pushed Mukuro over. She was surprised that Mukuro took it. Mukuro was like a dog who got beaten every time her master came home but just kept taking it. She still waited at the door for her master to come home knowing what was coming. Toko didn’t have time to analyze that She didn’t care. This was talking with her body. This was telling Mukuro to go away. 

No more murder mysteries.  
“I’m going to finish my perfect date with, Togami-sama.” 

Other people got in the way of her fantasies. She couldn’t control real people like she could her fictional characters. Toko started to look around for a pillow. Toko did not have much in her room beside her bed and her books. She wrote on her bed. She had stuffed animals in her room and posters of cute teen boys on the wall. When she moved out Toko had bought all the things her parents never bought for her. It almost looked like a normal teen girl’s room, from a distance. 

Mukuro just watched. Impassive. Like she gave up. 

“You know Cinderella! She could afford to wait around for her prince but I can’t. I’m already too dirty.”   
  
“Is that the one who ate the poisoned apple?”   
  
“That’s snow-white, you idiot! Now you’re using mixed metaphors. That's bad writing.” 

She stormed out leaving Mukuro there. Togami lived in a private apartment building. The building was old, as Togami had bought an entire building to refurbish it. He lived in an apartment on the ground floor.   
  
All she needed to do was pick the lock on the door next to his. The building was old, so the floorboards were loose. There was enough space between the floorboards to hide a dead body. She had scouted this location beforehand and even tested it.   
  
If she broke into the building next to his, crawled under the floorboards then she could finally fall asleep in the same room as him at night. It was when she finished prying off the floorboards she hesitated.   
  
Just for a moment. 

_What if he doesn’t need you?_   
Togami was always alone too, just like her. The first time she saw him she thought she didn’t want to leave such a kind looking boy alone. That was what she wanted, right?   
A beautiful one-sided love.   
A tragic pining princess.   
But wasn’t her pining just stalking?   
Toko crawled beneath the floorboards. 

Here is the story of how Toko’s wicked stepmother locked her in the closet. Toko was remembering it now, because being crammed into the crawl space trying to breathe heavy, humid air filled with dirt and dust was so much like that story. 

She didn’t remember the reason why. There probably wasn’t a good reason to lock a little girl in a closet. Her parents were always threatening to abandon her, but she didn’t think they were serious. At first, she didn’t believe it. It was like a nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from. She pinched, and pinched, and even clicked her silver slippers together and nothing.   
  
There was no light in the room so she only knew it by sensation. She was cold. She tried to get comfortable on the floor. She kept bumping into things and bruising her legs.   
  
Then she knew it by sound. When she started to realize her parents had locked her in here, she started screaming for somebody, anybody to let her out. The blackness. The silence. It was heavier than any scream, it pressed on her body, her lungs, suffocating her, shutting her up. Time didn’t pass in that place because it was dark all the time. Time was something that had lost meaning to her a long time ago, she woke up, went to school, was bullied, went home, was beaten, the same thing day in and day out. She was starting to unstick from her reality like she was slipping out of her body.   
  
She screamed. She screamed for so long she forgot that she was the one screaming. She thought maybe another girl in the darkness was there screaming with her. She imagined somebody was suffering this together with her. It was just the screaming echoing off the walls, creating the illusion that somebody else was there. All Toko really had to comfort herself was illusions. When her throat hurt so badly she couldn’t scream anymore, she realized it had just been her screaming all along.   
  
Toko finally got the door open on the third day. Her mother only said one thing.   
  
“Oh, it’s you.”   
  
It occurred to her then that her mother didn’t actually intend on locking her in a closet for three days. She had simply forgotten to let her out. 

Toko was directly under Togami’s bed now. It wasn’t any good, her stalking wasn’t doing her any good he was too far away. Even if he were lying to her next in bed, he would still be too far away.   
  
She wasn’t Cinderella.  
She thought pining away waiting for her prince to come was a cure for her loneliness, but pining was loneliness.   
  
“Ah… I’m just a stalker, aren’t I?” She whispered to herself under the floorboards. 

She wasn’t snow white. Ah, wait metaphors were getting mixed up in her head. That was bad writing. Snow White was the one who died and was buried in a glass coffin filled to the brim with flowers. Toko didn’t know what love was because she had learned it from watching Disney movies growing up. 

She was starting to remember what being in that dark room was like.  
She was starting to remember what being afraid of was like.   
Toko stayed awake the whole time she was locked in the closet. She was afraid to fall asleep afterward. Afraid that if she closed her eyes and fell asleep then the darkness was all she would see from now on. People described dying as falling asleep like it was a comforting thing, but what if your consciousness continued after death and all you could see from then on was the darkness behind your own eyelids? If she died here she would be alone in this closet forever. It wasn't death she feared, but the loneliness that came after.   
  
Snow White wasn’t dead, she was only sleeping. She was still sleeping when they buried her. There were apple seeds still in her stomach. The apple seeds she had swallowed started to grow roots. The roots punctured a hole in the stomach and the gastric juice leaked out melting the organs inside of her body. The stem climbed up her spine and grew all the way to her heart. The roots grew out from the chambers of her heart, down through the cavernous hollow arteries, and she felt her veins be stretched out underneath her skin. The roots spread like veins through her body, and she felt them grow like spines digging deeper and deeper. Her limbs stretched out and she became an apple tree. She was like the victims of Genocide Jack's murder, crucified by a tree.   
  
Toko realized, she was hallucinating now. She didn't hallucinate often.   
She was crazy, but not that specific kind of crazy. She only hallucinated when exposed to extreme amounts of stress, like for example the stress of being crammed into a small space underneath the floorboards when you were claustrophobic. Whoops.   
  
Flowers bloomed where her eyes were supposed to be because her eyes were useless organs now. The soft flesh of her eyeballs had rotted away a long time ago, and two flowers were their instead. Their roots had grown all the way into her brain. Like fingers in her brain. Like fingers squeezing the meat. Whose hands molded and shaped her brain? Was it the hands of her mothers? Was it her own hands? 

All of this happened and the prince still didn’t show up. She loved someone who wasn't there. That's what her one-sided love amounted to.   
Toko broke out of her delusion, covered in sweat. _I didn’t want to leave Togami alone._ “I… I don’t want to be alone.” 

“Are you okay? Are you alive?”   
  
Somebody asked her. 

Toko didn’t know how to respond.  
  
“Um, good morning.” Came out of her mouth. That was the normal thing to say, right?   
  
In response, Mukuro who had followed her, broken through the floorboards, and dragged her out, let go of her, bit down on her lip, and not saying anything slapped her across the face.   
  
Oh, this is what Mukuro was talking about.   
Communicating with the body.   
Roused awake.   
Slapped away.

Not content with hitting her once, Mukuro did so again, and again - her slapping stance deteriorating until she was just popping her in the chest like a child having a tantrum.   
  
It didn’t hurt at all.   
But it hurt so much.   
  
She broke free from her claustrophobic delusions, but then reality hit her stronger. That was the problem with Toko, she was either outside of her body and didn’t feel a thing, or she was chained to her body and felt everything. The reality was overwhelming, or it wasn’t even there. There was no in-between, she was a girl of extremes, that’s why she was always arguing with the other girl inside of her head.   
  
The last thing she remembered was the feeling of being strangled by roots, and then she was in a bright room. It was either, too dark, or too bright. Everything, the light, the voices speaking, the people standing there, all of them seemed to loathe her. She could feel their loathing like hands reaching out to grab her and dirty her body. Her heartbeat furiously Everything she did, every gesture, every tiny twitch she was suddenly, terrifyingly conscious and deliberate of.   
  
If she were to take time to describe every detail in that room she would excessively and lavishly describe every last thing they saw, and yet the thousands and thousands of details didn’t make sense together as a whole image in her brain.   
  
She was out of the closet now, but she seemed to have been transported into a different planet. She had no idea who she was. Was this reality? Was this the reality she loathed so much? And then, there was the terrifying, inexplicable fear. The sheer panic of being alone.   
  
The colors she saw were all garish, the noises seemed to slap her across the face, she looked at reality with sharpness and clarify she never had before, as if she was truly inhabiting her body for the first time - and it was awful. The mist in front of her eyes had cleared, and she wanted the mist back. She didn’t want this visual acuity. Being a glasses girl was kind of her look.   
  
She knew too that everything she could see around her was just a scene created by the electrical impulses inside her brain, using light impulses that passed through the gelatinous organ called the eye. She was also aware of the distance between her and everything else on a molecular level even if she wanted to reach out and touch Togami, they wouldn’t interact. They would just be millions and millions of particles floating next to each other.   
  
Oh, and she couldn’t breathe.   
Her head was suddenly filled with so many thoughts and so many new sensations she had forgotten the simple act of breathing which is really something she should have been controlling unconsciously with her medulla oblongata.   
  
In other words, Toko started to hyperventilate.   
A large hand covered her face. “I thought I told you not to breathe. Your breath is too stinky.”   
That hand on her lips was like a prince’s kiss.   
  
Toko slowly, slowly, came back to herself. 

**NOIRE**

Toko and Mukuro were both on the floor of Togami’s apartment.  
They were apologizing.   
Well, Mukuro apologized for both of them. 

“Aha! So the culprit has been hoist by their own petard.”   
  
“I’m really disappointed in you two. I can’t believe you’re acting this way on the day before Maizono-san’s funeral. We should all be coming together not suspecting each other.” 

Makoto said. His innocent, puppylike eyes watering. “Mukuro, why would you do this…?”  
  
“Toko told me, too.”   
  
Mukuro replied, tattling like a little kid.   
  
“Damn, dog…” Toko growled before she looked up at Makoto and saw he was wearing pajamas. “W-what? Naegi-kun slept over? Why did he sleepover?” 

“Togami-kun didn’t feel safe for the night, so he asked me to spend the night with him.”  
  
“I paid you to perform a service.” Togami harshly corrected.   
  
“You paid him to be your friend?” Toko asked. 

“Nevermind that.” Togami brushed her aside. “I know why you’re doing this, Fukawa-”

“I’m…”  
  
She was about to say it.   
Confess it after all this time. I’m just your stalker.   
  
Then Togami cut her off. 

“You suspect me as the culprit of the murder don’t you? I’m the one who supplied the wine after all. If you suspect me we’ll have to investigate together to prove my innocence.”   
  
Together?   
She didn’t even know what that word meant.   
Ah, but together.   
It suddenly didn’t matter to her whether it was a mystery or love story, as long as Togami was there with her.   
  
“Y-yeah. The only thing we can do for Maizono-san is to investigate her murder. She’d be happy, all of her friends coming together because of her.” Makoto said, wiping the tears from his eyes.   
  
"I d-don't think she's happy or anything, she's probably just dead," Toko grumbled to herself. 

If Togami wanted to investigate the murder, then she would chase him there. She reached out and pinched the sleeve of his jacket. "I won't leave you alone this time, Togami-sama."   
  
"I really would rather you leave me alone." He rejected her again for the umpteenth time. He looked at her like she was dirt for wrinkling his suit.   
  
Falling in love with someone else was a wonderful thing. Toko's tendency was to run too fast towards whoever she was chasing, and fall flat on her face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Books referenced this chapter:  
> The Decagon House Murders, Ayano Kitsuji.  
> Oldboy, Park Chan-wook. (This is a movie.Watch the original, not the remake).  
> Fight Club, Chuck Palanhiuk  
> I just make these lists because I want people to read more books.  
> Fic beta'd by desmondneeshisscalpel.tumblr.com


	3. Travelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toko goes on a date with a boy.  
> Mukuro investigates the murder. 
> 
> The Rogue scene this chapter is another depiction of domestic abuse, skip it please if you're uncomfy.

_ “Gentle abuse, repeated over and over in “that box.”  _

  * From Takatsuki Sen’s ‘The Black Goat’s Egg’.



  
Toko hated mirrors. Every time she saw one, she wanted to punch it with her bare hands until it cracked.  
  
Three-sided mirrors for doing your makeup in, mirrors in compact cases for checking your face, full-length mirrors for modeling outfits in the morning - her heart became so overwhelmed with the desire to break them she felt like it might split in two. The reason she did not act on those desires was that with the whole split personality thing she thought the symbolism was a bit cliche. 

The real reason was that the mirrors were liars. They looked like windows, but there was nothing on the other side. There was a story ‘On the other side of the Looking Glass’ where a girl tumbles into the other side of a mirror and ends up somewhere else, but that was just a story. When she was young Toko used to dream of the other side of the mirror, she dreamed of being somewhere else, anywhere but here, if only it was so easy.  
  
Then one day she tore off the mirror from the wall. She peeled it away from the other side of the class and saw there was nothing behind it. She grew so frustrated she used her fingernails to scratch the glass. She scratched, scratched, scratched. When she finished the glass was no longer mirrored and it became beautifully transparent and clear.  
  
She realized there was no one on the other side. There’s nowhere to go, to travel to. There was nowhere. She couldn't go to Wonderland or Paris. Even if she pressed her cheeks against the glass, closed her eyes, and pretended there was another girl on the other side of the glass keeping her company, she just felt cold glass. 

Toko squished her face against the window. She was so close breathing from her nose left two small circles of condensation. On the other side of the glass, Togami was talking to Makoto. The boys were standing together in Togami’s dressing room. There were a few headless mannequins among them, with perfectly pressed and fitted suits. It seemed natural that Togami would surround himself with pretty things, dolls, mannequins, clothes. Makoto stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the opulence and class. 

“You’re a fool, Naegi.”  
  
Togami pulled his handkerchief out of the front pocket of his unbuttoned vest, and then wiped Makoto’s big rounds cheeks with it, treating him like a child to be fussed over.  
  
“I mean, yeah, I guess. But like, why specifically are you calling me a fool this time?”  
  
“You’re far too concerned with other people’s feelings.”

There were countless letters open on Togami’s dressers. In those letters were notes written with cut-up magazine letters, claiming to know his family secret. Togami thought it was only natural he attracted attention, he was the object of everyone’s green envy and envy naturally led to hatred but it was a bit of a fly in the ointment waking up to death threats stuffed in his mailbox every morning.  
  
Speaking of flies, Togami was picking out clothes for Makoto because Makoto was so helpless he could not even dress. His hoodie was currently sitting in the waste bin, thrown there by Togami. He laid out a black and white suit jacket and slacks for him instead. Togami thought the worst of Naegi, but he assumed that even someone as incompetent as Naegi could dress.  
  
They were both standing, getting dressed in front of full-length mirrors.  
Toko noticed, they were both boys of the same age but that was where their similarities ended.  
They looked nothing alike, not one single thing in common, the furthest thing from reflections in a mirror. 

Makoto had a bleeding heart. Take a knife, cut through his shirt, cut a small sickle-shaped wound open on his chest and, watch him bleed. Even though he was wounded, he would pay far more attention to other people’s wounds than his own. Togami supposed that it was kind, but kindness made a mess and he hated messes.  
  
He got so impatient with the slow way Makoto was buttoning up his shirt, that he batted Makoto’s hands away, and used his long, delicate and precise fingers to do it. Toko giggled to herself at the thought of those fingers applied to her buttons to do the opposite.  
  
“I’m just saying you should try thinking of Fukawa-san’s feelings a little.”  
  
“Repeat what you said back to yourself.”  
  
“I’m just saying you should try thinking of Fukawa-san’s feelings.”  
  
“You do realize what your words imply, correct? That I should think about my stalker’s feelings. Whose side are you on exactly?”  
  
“I know what I sound like. I can’t help sounding like a total weenie!” Makoto moved around so much when he got excited, and Togami just watched still as a statue. “I think you should be nice, even if the other person isn’t being so nice to you.”  
  
“I should be nice… to my stalker.” 

“Well, it’s normal to be nice and…” Makoto’s fingers curled as he scratched the roundest part of his cheek, squinting one eye, like there was some dust there, “It’s not like you have a lot of friends.”  
  
“I have you.”  
  
“B-but you’re always saying we’re not friends.”  
  
“That’s because we’re not. As one of the obedient masses who doesn’t think for himself, the least you could do is listen to your betters.”  
  
“I dunno it’s just like you were always together…”  
  
“Because she was stalking me.”  
  
“Are you sure there wasn’t something there between you two?”  
  
“A great deal of space.”  
  
“She’s the only person you ever talk to, though… I just kind of started thinking you guys were friends.” Makoto remembered them together in the library, them walking together in class, Toko and Togami had somehow become a set in his mind.  
  
“So you’re saying I let her stalk me… because I’m lonely? You realize how completely absurd what you’re suggesting is, right?”  
  
“Yeah, but everyone is abnormal in our class. Except for me, I’m normal.”  
  
Togami regarded Makoto for a moment. Naegi was not a boy-genius or a prodigy; he did not have any miraculous gift that would have set him apart from the children his own age. He was a perfectly normal child - but more so, if that was possible, more in harmony with himself, more ideally a normal child than any of the rest of us.

And Togami thought just for a moment.  
The boy born with everything.  
The boy born with nothing.  
Yet, Naegi would never feel jealous of what Togami had.   
  
Makoto tugged on the tie untied around his neck. He struggled with it, tying it into strangely shaped knots. “If you ask her on a fake date, you might hurt her feelings. All I’m saying.”  
  
“God forbid I hurt my stalker’s feelings.”  
  
“Exactly! Now you’re getting it.”  
  
“It’s a real date.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Fukawa wants a prince. She’s never once looked at the real me. She’s not interested in him. If she were to meet him, the magic would end for her. She only wants Paris, not a real relationship.”  
  
“What? Aren’t we in Japan?”  
  
“If you weren’t around who would ask such dumb questions, Naegi? It’s a Casablanca reference.” Togami said and looking at Makoto with the usual disappointment. “Why are you getting dressed then? Do you think in your absurd mind that this is some sort of double date?”  
  
“Nah, Ikusaba-san, and I are just investigating the murder together.” Makoto raised and lowered his arms at the suit that was just a little too big for him. “Isn’t that why you lent me this monkey suit? So I could look like a detective from one of those old black and white movies?” 

“Excuse you, that was a custom fit, Armani.” Togami considered. “On me… On you, it is a monkey suit.”  
  
“You think you’re insulting me, but you’re not. I’m proud to be a monkey, boy!”  
  
“Kirigiri-san forbids anyone from the school from touching the case, he’s even used the government connections the school has to keep the police from getting involved.”  
  
“I know, but I gotta do something… otherwise, I’m… I’m useless.” 

“You already are useless. You can’t do a single thing on your own.” Togami got tired of watching Makoto fail to tie a basic knot. Once again his hands moved to do it for him. His fingers brushed Makoto’s neck, in a way that made Toko feel a twinge of jealousy. At that moment Togami stared at Makoto’s neck with such intensity like he was considering how easily breakable it was.  
  
Makoto was, fragile.  
Everything he held in his hands was fragile, like glass.  
When he tried to hold onto it he inevitably cut himself on the rough edges of the shards. 

The difficult part of tying Naegi’s bowtie for him was that from this close you had no choice but to look another person in the eye. Togami liked to turn his nose up at others. “What do you think of Ikusaba-san?”

“Well, I think that she’s got a little bit of red in her hair at the roots so she probably dyes it black. She’s taller than me, but a lot skinnier than me so she should eat more meat. From the way she acts, I’d guess she’s a type B, and her astrological sign is a Capricorn… besides that, I don’t think anything.”  
  
“Hah.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You always play the nice guy, but you’re not thinking about her feelings at all aren’t you?” Togami finished and turned away. He crossed his arms as he did, and Makoto once again felt like he was a step behind Togami. “This is why I don’t like ‘being nice’. Nice, nice, when it comes out of your mouth, it almost sounds like a lie.” 

“But, I’m too dumb to tell lies!” Makoto said, and then as if he had not heard a single thing Togami just said. “It’ll be nice though. The first time the Lunch Club can all hang out together.” 

“Fake dating trope, huh…?” Toko breathed against the glass once more, and then made another one of her cat noises, a hiss of disgust. “Ugh, fanfiction.”  
  
Togami walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. He had known she was there the entire time, of course. He always knew. Not that he thought of her.  
  
“T-Togami-sama, do you want to walk to school with me? You can protect me from all the other boys who would want to steal me away from you."   
  
“I would pay them to take you from me,” Togami said, and then uncrossing his arms slightly. “I suppose you can walk with me if you promise to give me a six-minute head start, and then stay six meters behind me the entire time.” 

Toko smiled on the other side of the glass.   
Perfect.  
The perfect distance between them. 

**NOIRE**

Two days after her misadventure with Ikusaba Mukuro. Five days after Sayaka Maizono’s death. One day after her funeral. The world just continued to go on. Fukawa Toko had to show up to school the next day. The same old school, when she wished to be literally anywhere else.  
  
She wanted to disappear into the library at the Lunch Period, but Mukuro wasn’t going to leave her alone anymore. Just like a dog when she dug her teeth into people she didn’t seem to let go easily.  
  
Which is why the four of them ended up pushing their desks together and eating. They almost looked like normal students. Toko didn’t really know what normal looked like though, to her it was an absurd idea as wonderland.  
  
“W-where is the w-wannabe?”  
  
“You mean Kuwata-kun? He’s been skipping school the past few days and locking himself in his room. I think he’s sad about Maizono-san’s death.”  
  
“I’m s-sure he’ll find a new girl to hit on. You knew her the b-best and you’re here. I g-guess you didn’t like her that much.” Toko was not concerned, about Makoto’s feelings. She didn’t even really feel the loss of Sayaka. Except for a faint _I wanted to talk to her again._ She had enough tragedies of her own, she wrote them down on pen and paper every day. She lived by writing down other people’s tragedies.  
  
Mukuro was eating silently, but stopped to elbow Toko hard. Toko made a noise like a cat whose tail got stepped on. Then Mukuro went back to pretending she wasn’t sneaking up glances at Makoto every five seconds. The few times Makoto caught her, he smiled back, and she immediately snapped her head and looked away.  
  
She looked like a scared animal - scared of simple kindness.  
Perhaps Mukuro was more fragile then she looked, perhaps she was glass too.  
  
Togami was the one who smashed the silence.  
The thin delicate, atmosphere created by everybody not talking about the girl who was not there.  
  
“Now then, we’re going Toko."   
  
He stared into Toko’s eyes.  
Togami never made eye contact with anyone, he turned his nose up and snorted at them.  
His eyes made her freeze.  
  
“Eh? Why are you asking me to go somewhere with you?" 

“I’m not asking. I’m ordering you. You will accompany me, in a date like fashion to-toooo…” Togami looked like he was choking on something but it certainly wasn’t his heart. He hit himself in the chest and coughed something up, but it wasn’t flowers. “Just kill me. I mean murder. It’s a murder investigation. Just the two of us in private. A private investigation.”  
  
Was that the slang the kids were using these days?  
Togami was still a bad liar.   
  
“Dude, you look like you’re dying,” Makoto said, concerned.  
  
“Th-this can’t be real. I’ve finally lost sight of the difference between fiction and reality.” 

Toko’s head collapsed on the desk and she started to drool. As she did that, Togami elbowed Makoto as hard as he could. Makoto was the kind of person who couldn’t do anything unless someone else kicked him in the pants.  
  
“Oh, Ikusaba-san. While they’re doing that, do you want to solve a murder mystery together?” 

That was kind of like a date, right?  
Mukuro stared blankly for a long time.  
  
“...Sure.” 

  
  


**NOIRE**

  
It’s possible to love someone too much.  
Like a wound on your heart. A crack in the paint. Then all the colors fade out, and all that’s left is the black and the white.  
That's why Togami didn't love anybody.   
  
But maybe, Toko thought they could both play pretend together.   
They could go to Paris together.  
If only for one night.  
  
She didn’t dress up for the date at all. A glasses wearing book girl, with a long-skirted uniform, tights, and messy braids tied back behind her head. The only difference was the little splash of red painted on her, a red scarf. _Wait, is that my scarf? Did she steal that from my room?_ Togami thought it was very like her. Then, he felt a twitch of annoyance that he knew her well enough he could describe something as being _like her._  
  
People weren’t supposed to be friendly with their stalkers.  
  
Oh well. This wasn’t a story where a girl received a makeover and all of her problems were fixed. She couldn’t remove her glasses and suddenly become a different person. Togami didn’t even care that much for beauty, it had no value unless a dollar sign was attached to it.

He clicked his teeth. He realized he had been staring at her for long, too long. “Why are you just staring at me? Let’s go already! And this time, walk by my side and hold my arm instead of trailing so far behind me. It’s annoying waiting for you to catch up.” 

“I… You… and Me?” The only difference between this and her normal outfit was that Toko had wrapped a red scarf around herself. Her long, spiderlike fingers curled around the place where the scarf covered her mouth.”I-I’m an unworthy girl. I c-can’t walk by your side.”  
  
“I already know that. There’s nobody in this world worthy of me. Now come along, already.” Togami tried to reach for her hand, but Toko pulled it away at the last moment to fiddle with her fingers. Togami stared at his empty hand for a moment and then crossed both of his arms.  
  
The book store went exactly as expected. They fought over each other’s taste in books. Neither the prodigy nor the progeny wanted to budge a single centimeter. An unstoppable force met an immovable object.  
  
When they reached the cafe with two separate bags of books and sat down, Toko was already in dreamland. She sighed moonily. “We have such great chemistry.”  
  
“Volatile chemistry, like the kind that boy used to blow up the exams last year.”  
  
“Don’t you think we’re perfect for each other?”  
  
“Perfectly incompatible,” Togami said, and then leaning over the table to meet her eyes once more. “No, you’re right. I’m the protagonist of some idiotic romantic comedy. The real reason you annoy me so much is that I’ve secretly been in love with you this entire time. I think the fact that we constantly argue and fight like we're trying to kill each other is a great basis for a relationship.”  
  
“By George, I think he’s got it!"   
  
“Who is this George? And why doesn't he understand sarcasm?"  
  
Togami was doing a bad job of faking it, pretending to be her prince. She never thought that he might just not know-how. That Togami of all people did not know how to go on a date with a girl, just like Toko had never been on a date with a boy. Togami who only loved himself. Toko who loved somebody else in place of loving herself.   
  
Togami only had his rehearsed manners. He only performed the role he was expected as the head of the family. What about the boy named Byakuya?  
  
Togami suddenly placed both hands on the table over hers and then stood up from his seat. “If I were to say, I’d fallen madly in love with you, what would you do?”  
  
Toko watched him from behind her glasses, yet another barrier between them. “I'd ask if you'd gone insane. R-remember our dynamic, I’m the one who hits on you and you pretend not to be interested.”  
  
“I’m not pretending. I’m genuinely uninterested.” 

_Togami you’re supposed to be pretending you like her._

It was strange, it's like he could not pretend. A magical spell was cast on him preventing him from lying. His annoyance, his general disdain for her, all his true feelings came out even when he didn’t want to.   
  
He tried once again to put his hand over hers, but Toko got distracted by the sudden idea to go through the books she had purchased. She ducked down and her hand moved out of his way like a mouse scurrying away from him. He curled his fingers up but didn’t say anything.  
  
“Why are you always reading tragedies?” Toko asked him while digging through her bag.  
  
“They’re honest.” He said, and then looking off somewhere a memory only he could see. “I also read to confirm to myself, that no tragedy would ever move my heart. I won’t lose to tragedy.”  
  
“I could write a story that w-would make you cry.”  
  
“Your very existence makes me want to cry. You’re the greatest tragedy of them all, Fukawa.”  
  
“Th-thank you.”  
  
“Stop pretending my insults are compliments.”  
  
“W-well I’m a little bit of masochist so-”  
  
“Stop. Stop. Stop.”  
  
Toko broke up their bickering to put a book on the table between them. The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike. “This one’s a really good tragedy then, this couple tries to move on with their life but the spirits of the dead won’t let go of them.”  
  
“Won’t let go?”  
  
“There's this scene where handprints appear on the glass, like multiple hands all reaching out at once.”  
  
Fourteen pairs of hands.  
Fourteen pairs of hands all reaching out towards him, the youngest. They were trying to drag him down. Togami had to get out of here. “You don’t really want to be here, do you?” He meant, on this date with him. She didn’t want the real him.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“If there’s somewhere you want to go, I’ll take you there. Name the place.” 

“P-Paris, I guess.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“I’ve always wanted to run away there, ever since I was a little kid.”  
  
“Then, let’s go right now. I’ll make the arrangements.”  
  
“N-no-no-no!” Toko withdrew her hands suddenly. “T-that would be so far away from my room. All of my books are in my room I can’t leave it. I can visit there any time I want in my imagination so I don’t really need to go there.”

Togami smiled, for all the wrong reasons. He reached forward again and tried to entwine his fingers with hers. “W-what are you doing?”  
  
“I want you to hold my hand, Fukawa. That’s an order.”  
  
“I’m not going to play along with your hand holding fetish!” Fukawa suddenly slapped his hand away.

Togami didn’t really want to hold her hand. He just hated rudeness. Toko didn’t know how to behave. She never behaved in the ways he expected. Whatever. No matter. He didn’t want her hand. He didn’t like hands.

Hands, hands, handprints on glass.  
Handprints of ghosts appearing on his skin.   
Hands touching him without permission.  
Hands refusing to let go.   
Togami didn’t really know what to do with another person’s hand in his own. They both stared from behind their glasses for a long time. 

The awkwardness between them was certainly real.  
 _What about this was fake, he began to wonder._ Then he looked away. His goal was to chase Toko off. To finally be rid of her. He wanted her to go somewhere far away.  
  
“The decor here is Victorian. The kind of lavish decorations that adorned the British Empire at the peak of Queen Victoria’s reign. Hm, speaking of the Victorian Era… Jack the ripper was from that time, correct?”  
  
“W-why suddenly bring that up? All of this talk of murderers is ruining the mood.”  
  
“This is a murder investigation, isn’t it?”  
  
“What exactly are we investigating by having dinner at a cafe together.”  
  
“We’re investigating each other.”  
  
“S-so we’re investigating each other’s personalities, and the prospects of our relationship.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“S-so it’s a date.”  
  
This was the worst possible result of his scheme. It shouldn't be this hard to make Toko lose interest. The person she loved wasn't him, after all. Togami hurriedly changed the subject. “Y-you like the french?” 

“Yes, french scenery, french architecture, french art, it’s all exquisite. Paris as a city shows that humans aren’t entirely worthless.”  
  
“Y-you’ve actually been to Paris before? I’ve always wanted to go there. I’ve seen it in my dreams so many times!”  
  
“Standing in the streets is an entirely different experience. No book or work of art could capture what it means to be there in person. You’ll never reach that place if you don’t leave your room.” Togami’s eyes fell in disappointment. He ended up showing his genuine emotion.  
  
“T-tell me about Paris! I could use it for the writing material.”  
  
So, Togami told her, about carousels he had ridden on, about trolleys in the street, windmills he had seen, clothes that were thousands of dollars apiece glanced through shop windows, jewelry that looked like the diamonds had been plucked from the stars and set up in display cases. Sparkling, sparkling, all of it shining enough to blind.  
  
Toko wanted to experience all of it. Every color of the vivid memories he described for her.  
She wanted to mix them all together. She wanted to blur all the lines.   
  
“The Palais Garnier, an opera house. I once went there with my mo-”  
  
“I want to go there.”  
  
“Then, I went to a department store that was several stories tall. Mother brought so many dresses-”  
  
“I want to go there too!”  
  
“Then, when I was walking alone I fed some stray cats in the street-”  
  
“There are cats in Paris?”  
  
“There are cats everywhere, Fukawa,’ Togami said flatly.  
  
“Y-yeah but they’re french cats so that-they’re probably all fancy. Even the cats are better in Paris!” Toko suddenly stood up. “I want to go! Even if all the beautiful people will just look down on me, and I’d be like a big black stain in that city that’s like a living, breathing painting, I’d be too busy enjoying myself to care!”

Togami raised an eyebrow. She really was the exact opposite of him. Talking with her like this was starting to become fun. He needed to… ruin her fantasies… not get swept up in them with her. “Then, I’ll take you there. You can just say it’s for research material for your books if you need a reason to leave your room. Just let me be the first one to read whatever book you write from it.”

“I didn’t even know you read my books.”  
  
“I… I d-don’t. Been a fan of your books for a long time. Togami bit his tongue. “I just want to see a return on my investment.”  
  
“Why do you spend so much time in Paris, anyway?” 

“I was born there.”  
  
Togami answered without thinking. Then, that single moment of honesty was enough to bring all conversation to a grinding halt between them. Toko dd did not want to inquire any further into the life of her prince, and Togami did not want to speak of who he was before he became a Togami, because he was nobody back then. 

If Toko saw that boy she wouldn’t even recognize him.  
Just like there were two Toko’s, there were two Togami’s.  
That boy went by a different name, his mother’s maiden name.  
That boy never left his mother’s house. He was in Paris, France. He was far, far, away. 

  
  
**NOIRE**

Togami looked at the water below. “Why don’t you jump in that river, Fukawa? You might smell a little better.”  
  
“You know I don’t like baths.”  
  
“No, I don’t. I don’t know anything about you.”

The two of them were standing together on a bridge. Togami leaned all the way over the edge of the bridge, resting his elbows on the railing. In Paris, there was a bridge known as the Pont des Artes where a pair of lovers tied a “love lock and then threw a key away in the river underneath.  
  
“Wh-why isn’t anybody talking?” Toko suddenly stammered.  
  
“It’s because you and I don’t have a single thing in common.” 

“W-we could talk about books.”  
  
“You really need to find another hobby.”  
  
“Y-you’re my only other hobby.”  
  
“Stalking me does not count as a hobby,” he corrected her forcefully.  
  
“W-well, what are your hobbies? What do you even do in your spare time? You don’t even have any friends.”  
  
Togami looked at the water below. The French threw keys off of a bridge. In Japan, a famous author had attempted to drown to death with his lover in a river like this and called it love. “I have something like a friend…”  
  
“Who?”  
  
Togami raised his head slowly and looked at Toko. There was a sudden clarity in his eyes. “Nevermind.”  
  
“Oh…”  
  
He thought about that bridge with the locks, and how if he could he would destroy every single padlock. He would take a rock and smash the padlock again and again until it was broken, and he wanted to do the same to his heart too. 

“People always shun me, thinking I’m a snob. Even before I became Togami Byakuya, I was looked down upon for being born out of wedlock. I had nobody to talk to, so excuse me for not having many friends among my peers.’  
  
“...”  
  
“You’re not the only one who read because they were lonely. A book is like, a friend, I can talk to, about things I like in a quiet place.”

“O-oh…”  
  
“You know when my father was seducing my mother, he bought her so many books. When he left, the books were still there. Sitting alone and reading them was the closest thing I had to…”  
  
Toko put both of her hands on the railing. She pushed off suddenly and climbed up. Turning herself around, she sat on the edge of the railing. Her reason why was simple, she wanted to be closer to Togami when talking to him, but he was so much taller than her.  
  
Toko suddenly found the words. “W-why don’t you like my books?”  
  
“Your books are beautiful, Fukawa. You genuinely deserve to be called a prodigy. Your literary prowess is almost completely unmatched…the words you write speak to people.” Togami turned his head and noticed that even now they were standing apart.  
  
They were two people.  
Two people who couldn’t be close to others.  
“A comfortable distance.”  
That was the best way to describe their relationship.  
  
“They speak to people and tell them lies, your books are just a beautiful lie.”

“I-I’m not lying.” At the time Toko wrote down what her true feelings were. “I can-know I’m always pretending, but… I know that you hate me. That everyone does. When I lie to myself and say things like one day I’ll get to Paris, it gives me the motivation to leave my room.”  
  
“But, you never planned on going there.” Togami leveled his eyes at her.  
  
The two of them, her sitting there, him practically leaning over her. The way they were posed and the way the sunlight rippled off of the river water below almost looked like a painting.  
In other words, it wasn’t real.  
  
“Just like you never loved me. All the things you write in your books are pretty little lies.”  
  
“D-don’t tell me what I feel.”  
  
“You saw a handsome looking rich boy and pretended I was some prince.”  
  
“M-maybe it started that way, but…” Toko grabbed with her fingers at the scarf around her neck, as if the scarf was suddenly wrapping too tight around her and cutting off her breathing. “W-what was everything we were doing today? I know it was a fake date, meant to trick me, b-but you just took me to the book store, and ate dinner with me, and talked with me for a long time. What part of that was fake?”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I-I’m the only person who even likes you. I’m the only person who talks to you daily. What's wrong with searching for some truth in the lie? Or some ugliness in beauty? E-even if I have to squint my eyes behind my glasses...I can tell we have some sort of relationship.”  
  
A relationship between a stalker and her victim.  
  
“But, it’s not love-”  
  
“Can’t we just pretend that it is? What's wrong with the people who need to pretend to live? Th-they’re just trying to live like everybody else.”  
  
“It’s unsightly.”  
  
“It’s ugly, but ugly people, ugly things like insects need to live. They shouldn't die or be squished like in Takatsuki's novels."  
  
“They’re unnecessary. You’re unnecessary.” Togami thought just for a moment how easy it would be to push her off of the bridge. Murdering the person you loved would be a crime of passion, but he didn’t love her so this would be a passionless crime. Push her into the cold water below. He was so, so cold.  
  
“What do you know? You’ve never been an unwanted child. You were born wanted by somebody. So h-how can you tell us how to live our lives? Y-you’re one of the chosen few, the beautiful.”  
  
“What about me is beautiful? I’m just somebody’s bastard son! Don't tell me you fell in love at first sight, you're not even looking at me."

Togami shouted so suddenly, and so forcefully it made Toko remember she was terrified of others raising her voice at her. Shouting in her life was usually followed by violence. She flinched just enough that she lost her balance and fell backward.

Backward, and off of the bridge.  
She was falling. 

In reality.  
But in her dreams.  
She was flying, all the way to Paris.  
  
Maybe she didn’t want to travel, she just wanted to leave her body.  
  
Togami at the last moment contradicted himself, after telling her to go away so many times he reached out to grab her. But, his fingers fell short of her and all he grabbed was the red scarf that was tied around her neck. It unraveled from her as she fell away.  
  
Togami’s fingers went slack in shock.  
He let the scarf go, and it fell uselessly into the river. 

  
**ROGUE**

In a dream, in a dream.  
Toko had been thinking about the dreams she had lately.  
Seaside, by the waning tide.  
A kitten drowned to death.  
  
Toko just wanted to drown in love, but she fell into the river water instead. It took her unwillingly, back through her memories. She remembered. Remembered was the wrong word because she didn’t forget, she had always been remembering.  
  
There was a reason, the kitten named Fukawa Toko did not like water. She was afraid of drowning. So afraid, she couldn’t even bring herself to look into Togami’s eyes.  
  
“What’s with that gaze?” 

A voice spoke in her memories. It was one of her memories. She didn’t remember which one. It was always one of them. Fukawa Toko sat dirty, in a trash-filled room. There were several old shopping bags, newspapers piled up, and cans of beer on the floor. Her mother was crushing a can in her hand in frustration while she talked. “I’ve been so kind to you! I’m your mother! Even though, you didn’t even come out of my belly! Even though you’re not my tadpole.” 

Toko did not know what aggravated her mother so much about her eyes. She was always watching, quietly, from behind her cracked glasses.  
  
“Say something!”  
  
She didn’t know what to say. Everything she said would make it worse.  
  
“You’re looking down on me aren’t you? You think that she's better than me!”  
  
Toko had one pleasant memory with her mothers. One day, when her hair got too long her mother showed her how to braid her own hair, so it wouldn’t get in the way while she read her books. Her mother hummed to herself the whole time. She didn’t yank or pull at Toko’s hair the whole time. It was the only time she had ever touched and held her daughter with any kind of care. Toko, sometimes, hummed that tune to fall asleep when she was all alone. 

Her mother grabbed her by the braid and pulled hard like she was trying to rip the scalp from the top of her head.  
  
Toko finally found the words. “It hurts. It hurts, let me go.”  
  
It didn’t matter what she said. There was a reason she hated talking because nothing she said in this household mattered. No one listened to her. Even when she begged them to stop, they didn’t listen.  
  
Her mother dragged her across the tiled floor. She felt it rub against her cheek, and her head hit against the wall once or twice. “I won’t stop or let go. If you’re so unhappy here, go back to the ocean, or go to France for all I care.”  
  
You don’t even want to be my mother. Toko thought as she was helplessly dragged along. As she was dragged away, she saw her father look at her once, and then look away with indifference. Her mother stopped when they made it to the bathroom. The bathtub was already full of water as if somebody had drawn up a bath.  
  
“I know you hate me worse than that other woman!”  
  
A hand harshly grabbed her head from behind. Her face was pushed under the water. The entire world became blue. Then the world was nothing. Her glasses fell off her face, her mother pulled so harshly that her hairbands broke and her hair fell out of her braids. She tangled her fingers worse in her messy black hair, and then pushed her head deep under the water again.  
  
“Dirty child. Filthy child. Smelly child. Let’s get you clean. I won’t allow you to breathe until you’re clean.”  
  
“Ahhhhhh.” Toko could only make noise with her mouth as she desperately tried to breathe. When she opened her mouth, it filled up with water again. It was like she really was in the ocean. She was being forced to drink the whole ocean down. Her lungs were going to fill up with water and she would drown. That happened sometimes she read it in a book, if you swallowed water then you could drown even if you were on dry land.  
  
“You love your other mother more than you love me, don’t you?” 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah.”  
  
“Well, if you want to breathe tell your mother how much you love her.” 

“Lo...ve...you…” Toko finally gasped, forcing her head up out of the water. “I love you more than my other mother.”

“You love me the most? Do you?”

She let go of her hair and Toko collapsed onto the floor. She looked like a discarded doll, her messy hair thrown about, her half-drowned body. Yet still, she muttered with the last of her breath. “I love… my mommy.”

From that day forward, the words _I love you_ became a lie to Toko.  
What was the truth?  
If she could run away to the sea or France she would.  
Escape from here right away.  
But, she had been born inside of this trash-filled house.  
She would probably die here.  
And just become another piece of trash.  
Like a broken doll thrown away in a dump.  
Not being able to do a thing.  
The only place she would ever run away to was inside her own imagination. 

**NOIRE**

Toko had been told several times she had the eyes of a dead fish. Now she flopped around like a dying one. Being pulled away from the river was like, being ripped forcibly out of the embrace of a comforting dream. She desperately tried to breathe.

If she was going to be the little mermaid and die with an unfulfilled love then she should just dissolve into foam already. It hurt to live. It hurt to breathe.  
  
Togami stripped off his black jacket. He unbuttoned his shirt as if the wet, white shirt clinging to him made it difficult for him to breathe as well. 

  
“I can’t believe you saved me,” Toko said, breathless in every sense of the word. "I thought you didn't like me."  
  
“I didn’t. I don't.’

Togami froze then.  
Unable to be close to her, and unable to fully be rid of her. A comfortable distance.   
His blue eyes, frozen. Toko had seen Togami’s many different faces, even the ones he did not show others, stalking him obsessively as she did. However, she had never seen the face he was making at this precise moment.  
  
He almost looked like…  
A scared child.  
  
“I didn’t do it for you.”  
Now it was Togami’s turn to shake.  
“I didn’t want to watch another person that I couldn’t save…”  
  
Like his mother.  
Like his brothers and sisters.

Toko realized they were so close now. There was no glass wall between them. She looked at his blue lips and the way his whole body seemed to shiver and realized she was close enough, all she had to do was lean a little closer and she could finally touch him. The boy she had always been so far away from. She wanted to, but… it was suddenly too real. She couldn’t comfort the scared boy in front of her. Not in any real way.  
  
Toko was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to tell him the truth. “Togami-sama, I’m…I have to confess...”  
On the other side.  
She was a murderer. She had probably killed one of their friends. Her other self might be stalking him. She wanted to tell him the truth, she owed him that much at least.  
  
“Enough. I don’t want to hear another one of your silly love confessions.” 

Ah.  
She had lied too much before this. 

And then.  
The phone rang.  
  
Togami answered it, then after a brief conversation. “That’s Naegi. The investigation has progressed.”  
  


**NOIRE**

If life was a book to Toko, for Mukuro it was a flat painting she stared at.  
She could never be inside the painting, never enter it. Just like she could never really be with her sister or be in the classroom with her friends but just looking was enough for her, it made her happy. 

Toko wanted to go to France.  
Mukuro just wanted to go home. For her, the home was another person.  
Once she ran away from home and joined a terrorist cell group, and her parents did not even file a missing person’s report. That was all that needed to be said on that. 

Her sister begged her not to go at that time. Her sister was the only one that missed. Her sister wrote her letters when she was gone... And she was truly happy. With her small family. _We’re family, right Junko?_ She repeated that phrase every day to herself. 

Ever since Junko had locked herself away in her room reality became like a dream she had every night. An art gallery that was one hallway, and one thousand copies of the same painting.  
  
She would wake up and take care of Junko, and go to bed and dream.  
The same process. The same happiness.  
  
She felt that happiness over and over and over, as regular and predictable as breathing.  
And on this day, just like any other day Mukuro had woken up, taken care of her sister, and she was happy because her sister was still alive and there was still a place for her in the world.  
  
Mukuro’s world was so small it could really only hold both her and her sister. Smaller than a snowglobe, and more fragile. Then, a boy suddenly walked into her world like it was easy.

“Is it really okay for me to be alone with you in a girl’s room?” 

“Naegi, we’re investigating a murder is it really time to be awkward?”

“It’s always the time to be awkward for me!” Makoto squeaked.

Mukuro wondered if she was a normal girl would she giggle at that. “Well, just because we’re investigating doesn’t mean we can’t have a fun time doing it.” 

“What color is the sky in your world?” 

“Blue. Why?” Makoto said, and then tilted his head. “Oh, that was a joke! It’s so hard to tell because you say everything in the same tone of voice. You’re actually kind of funny, ya know.”  
  
“I’m not.” Her sister was a funny one.  
  
“Huh? You don’t think so? Why?”  
  
“I don’t have a personality.”  
  
“What? What does that even mean? Everybody has a personality… b’cuz of like consciousness and stuff.” 

Makoto said these things so easily. You’re just like everybody else. You’re a normal girl. When he said them, he really believed them.

“Get on your knees,” Mukuro said, changing the subject.  
  
“Ummm, sure, but why?” 

The two of them were standing together outside of the dorm building. They were next to the wall behind Sayaka’s dorm. The girl’s dorms were on the first floor, the boy’s dorms were on the second. 

“The window.” 

Makoto got on his knees and elbows, and Mukuro stepped on his back. He was a little bit too willing to be everyone’s stepping stool. She saw the glass window was locked from the inside and without a moment’s hesitation, plunged her fist straight through the glass. 

Broken glass scraped her skin, but she didn’t feel any pain. She didn’t feel anything. She cleared the glass away, and then pulled herself in. When she was on the inside she found a chair to stand on, and then held her arms out for Makoto to grab onto, and lifted him and him like he weighed nothing. 

Sayaka’s room had been torn up, there was almost no trace of Sayaka inside of it. There were countless posters on the wall, but Sayaka had been erased in all of them. Someone had scribbled her face out with a magic marker and written insults all over her posters. Sayaka was always her own harshest critic. All of the posters, and the CDs, and all of the merchandise for Sayaka’s idol group was completely wrecked. Makoto looked at everything in shock. He had never seen this side of Sayaka. Of course not, he was never looking. 

“W-what are you doing?”  
  
“Investigating.” Mukuro knelt and picked up a brown manilla folder from the floor. It had been left out in the open as if waiting for someone to find it. 

“B-but, this is Maizono-san’s room. This is all her stuff. She’ll be upset if she knows we’re going through it like this.” 

“She’s dead. She doesn’t feel anything anymore.” 

She walked over to the desk and opened up the folder. Pictures spilled out of it, pictures of Makoto and Sayaka hanging out together. There was a letter on the inside written from magazine article clippings, claiming to know her secret. 

Blackmail.  
  
“Why would anybody want to blackmail Maizono-san?” Makoto asked. This must have been hard for him, someone who didn’t see the dark sides of people at all.  
  
“Maybe you shouldn’t be here.”  
  
“H-huh? Why not?”  
  
“You were closer to Maizono-san than anybody else, but you didn’t cry at the funeral. Ever since then you’ve been smiling like nothing is wrong.” 

“I’m not strong like you. I’m not smart like Togami-kun. I can’t read people as well as Fukawa-san. The only thing I’ve got going for me is that I can smile at a time like this.” Makoto said, and his cheeks looked like they were hurting for all the effort he was putting into his smile. “I’ve got to smile for everybody else’s sake.”  
  
“That’s so stupid,” Mukuro said. She wasn’t touched or charmed at all, by his fake smile. She swept her feet under Makoto’s and tripped him. He fell backwards onto Sayaka’s bed. “You’re so stupid. If you’re sad, you should cry.”  
  
Because you can cry.  
  
“I w-won’t. Everybody needs me.”

Mukuro rabbit punched him in the gut as hard as she could. She wasn’t good at anything except violence. She couldn’t touch other people, only brutalize them. “Nobody needs you, your cheap sense of self-sacrifice is utterly unnecessary.” 

Mukuro just wanted to see him cry. That was her reason for bullying him. She was like a little kid on the playground with a crush. She climbed onto the dead girl’s bed with Makoto. She pulled at his hair and made him look at her.  
He had blue eyes, flecked with green.  
The light filtering through chlorinated pool water.  
She could kiss him, and drink him in. She could bite him. She looked indecisive as to which he wanted. This was not an act of love. This was predation. It was a wolf pinning her prey down so she could sink her teeth in.  
  
“Everybody already knows you’re an unreliable crybaby, so just cry.” 

I c-can’t.”  
  
“Why not?” She asked.  
  
“Because you always look like you’re about to cry…” She had always wondered why Makoto took notice of a girl like her. “You stare out the window, and look away from people, because you’re hiding your tears aren’t you?”  
  
“Huh?” 

Mukuro had never cried. It was Junko who cried for attention. Junko laughed loudly like she was going mad, and then had crying fits, and threw tantrums, and Mukuro silent and still followed her around like a shadow. 

A man pressed down on a dead girl’s bed.  
A killer on top straddling him. 

“There’s a girl right in front of me, and I can’t do anything to help her. If I started to cry too, I’d be a super high school level loser.”

Time stopped between them.  
“...”  
“...”  
They were alike, in some ways. They were both shies.  
  
“Are you hitting on me?” Mukuro asked.  
  
“You were the one who was hitting on me a second ago!” Makoto said, and Mukuro suddenly realized what she had done and rolled off of him. They were about to. In a dead girl’s room. That’s right this was a murder investigation. 

She wasn’t a girl he could like.  
She wasn’t a girl. 

Mukuro remembered trying on a cute outfit all alone in a room. She wondered what Makoto would think seeing her dressed like this. Even though her sister wasn’t there, Mukuro still heard her voice, felt red fingers closing around her neck, _You’re unsuited for him._

She stood up and put a hand on her chest trying to forget her adolescent confusion. As her eyes went about the room she saw an overturned drawer at her feet. She flipped it over and inside, there were countless amounts of sleeping pills.

“Why would Maizono-san have these?”  
  
“Idols often have irregular sleep schedules. She’d probably get a prescription super easily.” Mukuro immediately figured out how the wine had put them all to sleep. Ah, but what was she even doing here playing detective? She shouldn’t be here. Makoto should be here with a good girl like Kirigiri. He was a hero. He was her hero, even. If she asked, Makoto would probably do something stupid like jump in a river to save her.  
  
And she was just Enoshima Junko’s sister.  
Mukuro was sure, the girl Makoto was looking at.  
The portrait of a girl.  
Was someone nice and beautiful, but it wasn’t her.  
Mukuro wanted to be like that girl.  
  
Makoto’s fingers were so delicate as they played with the strings of her heart. “Naegi-kun, there’s something I want to tell you…”  
  
“L-like a love confession?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Oh right! Who would ever confess their love to me? I don’t have any lovable qualities at all.” 

“Naegi, I don’t want to be your friend. I…” I want to eat you. I want to taste you. This feeling isn't to love. It's violence, tearing me to pieces. “I'm not normal. The girl you see, the girl that shows up to class every day isn't the real me. Only my sister knows the real me." 

“It must be tough, huh? Always having to hide something around others?” Makoto leaned down and kissed the wound on her hand, to make it better. Mukuro regarded, the normal boy as if he were a prince at that moment. A flower pressed against her hand. Love, blooming. “I hope one day I can meet her. The real you. Aha, I’m kind of nervous just thinking about it, I bet she’s a really pretty girl. I wonder what she thinks of a dork like me?” 

Mukuro didn’t want to go anywhere.  
She just wanted to stay in that room with Makoto a little longer.  
But she had to leave eventually, her sister needed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Books Referenced this Chapter.  
> The Graveyard Apartments, Mariko Koike.


	4. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fukawa Toko.  
> Her birthday is March 3rd. She made her debut as a novelist at the age of 10, and from there she won a large number of literary awards. Her Magnus Opus is So Lingers the Ocean. More recent novels include, BLue Thread from the Scarred Mountain, and The Family from the Day Before Yesterday. 
> 
> Takatsuki Sen.  
> Best-selling horror novelist. Her debut work published at 14 is titled Dear Kafka. It's a best seller with 500,00 copies. Monochrome Rainbow is a short story collection. The seventh work is titled The Black Goat's Egg. It narrates the story of a son and his mother, a cold-hearted serial killer. 
> 
> Her eighth work is called The Hanged Man's Macguffin. A collection of stories about the life of prisoners on Death Row.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mention of Toko's abusive past, and some ugly implications.

“The child who has forgotten how to go home,  
Has forgotten the act of going home itself,  
And so, once again. The child wants to die.”

  * From Takatsuki Sen’s ‘Monochrome Rainbow’. 



**BLANCHE**

Fukawa Toko wondered if she was one of the gifted ones.  
  
That was why she wanted to make her debut as an author as early as possible. She wanted to be able to give something to others. Holding onto such thoughts she clung desperately to the book in her arms.  
  
And then at ten years old, her dream became a reality. She moved out of that house. All she really needed was a room with a futon and enough space for her books. Nobody ever came to visit so she was free to write all day long. She ended up sleeping a lot because it was so quiet.  
  
In middle school, she still made fleeting attempts to get close to her classmates. In high school, she didn’t bother. The first year of touring around as an author was okay. The second was dull. In the third year, Toko told her agent she wasn’t going to make public appearances anymore.  
  
Toko wrote.  
She wrote. She wrote. She wrote.  
She wrote. She wrote. She wrote. Until the end of the story.  
Because writing was her gift.  
  
But she was so tired of writing. If she didn’t have too much hope. If she could just accept stagnancy. If she could just stop thinking. Then she wouldn’t have to write anymore.  
  
Toko met a real gifted person once. She met a real author once.  
They didn’t even exchange a single word, much less a glance.  
  
All that happened was they crossed each other on the street. 

She was small. She had green hair. She wore clothes that were about two sizes too big. Even though she was small, her face was round, and she was just a little bit chubby in the way children looked, she was complete. Most adults were just fully grown children, but to Toko, she seemed like a real adult.  
It was on a snowy day. An all-white background.  
Her cheeks were red as apples. They walked by each other, just by coincidence.  
  
Takatsuki Sen, the literary prodigy who made her debut at fourteen.  
Fukawa Toko, the literary prodigy who made her debut at ten.  
Fukawa looked back.

Takatsuki didn’t. Didn’t even notice her.  
If Toko were a worm in her apple, Takatsuki would have swallowed her without even thinking. Eaten her whole.  
  
Toko’s gaze lingered, even after Takatsuki had walked away.  
_This is a truly gifted person,_ Toko thought.  
_This is a child of God,_ Toko thought. 

She looked at her hands, the invisible stitches on them only she could see because the wounds had healed so long ago, and realized she would never truly be like Takatsuki Sen. Her words would never be as good as anything Takatsuki could write because she wasn’t gifted anything.  
  
All her parents had given her were scars. 

**NOIRE**

She hadn’t meant to see. She opened the girl to the door’s bathroom so suddenly without thinking.  
  
“It won’t come out.”  
Scrub, scrub.  
When she opened the door to the bathroom door Ikusaba Mukuro was sitting on the bathroom counter. She had a white shirt bunched up in her hands. She was shirtless, her pale skin, her breasts, all of it showing. A girl so thin and lithe Toko could see every rib visible underneath her skin, and the exact curvature of where her collarbone met her shoulder. 

Toko’s eyes traveled to the mirror that reflected Mukuro’s. Toko’s chest seized and she felt like he couldn’t breathe, even though she wasn’t the one in pain. There was only one way to describe the intricate network of scars on Ikusaba Mukuro’s back. Roots. It was like someone had planted a seed into her spinal cord at the base of her spine.  
  
Roots began to poke out from underneath the seed. The roots burrowed into the flesh of her back seeking out more nutrients. They tunneled, and grew, underneath her skin. In the layer of tissue between her epidermis and the organs underneath a network of roots all grew out, crisscrossing, overlapping, tangling into one another. Her scars, like so many roots on her back, Toko knew, that somebody probably planted the first seed inside Mukuro, gave her her first scar when she was young, and she had been growing up, and gaining more scars since then. 

_How ugly._

Toko thought as she covered her mouth with her hand. Some of the wounds were still fresh.  
She hated open wounds. They were like mouths opening on the body. They opened so wetly, and blood came out. They wouldn’t heal properly. They’d stay open. They’d get dirt inside them.  
She knew those wounds were never going to close up. Mukuro would try to scratch at the open wounds to get the dirt out, but the dirt underneath her fingernails would just make them dirtier. Then the wounds would turn into sores, then they would fester and rot.  
Rotten roots. 

“It won’t come out.” Mukuro repeated, “I’ve gotta throw it away.”  
  
Mukuro looked up from the bloodstained shirt and saw Toko not looking at her. Before either girl could say anything, someone barged in and pushed Toko aside.  
  
“Ikusaba-san you’re taking forever-!” 

Makoto’s face suddenly turned red. Seeds had been planted, and roses were blooming in his cheeks. Toko found the way Makoto’s eyes regarded Mukuro, to be incredibly gross. The image of Mukuro reflected at the center of his eyes like she was the only thing he saw, and Makoto’s eyes were always as clear as glass.

“M-Mukuro, you. You’re bleeding.” 

Makoto immediately rushed over to Mukuro and grabbed her hand. He pulled her hand away from her and studied the fresh wounds that were open all the way down her arm. He paid more attention to her wounds so that he wouldn’t have to watch her writhe in embarrassment about being seen as naked.

Makoto trembled, as he tried to reach out and touch her bleeding arm. He dabbed his two extended fingers in the blood. He didn’t flinch away from any part of her. He didn’t stare. His eyes were awash with concern, and those blue eyes seemed to wash over her. The scars couldn’t be washed away, but they were soothed by cool, running water. 

They were in the nurse's office then. Toko didn’t know why she had come along.  
  
The nurse’s office was all white, too. The three of them were alone in it. Toko had told the crybaby nurse to go away. What good was a person who spent so much time crying over their own wounds they couldn’t look after others? Before Makoto pulled her out into the hallway, Mukuro managed to pull a black sports bra on. She was sitting in a chair with wheels on it. The way she sat was rather polite, with her hands on her knees. Her body was so skinny, supporting the weight of herself looked to be too much effort. Her shoulders shook, and she threatened to cave in on herself.  
  
Makoto had told her to sit.  
She obeyed.  
Makoto had told her to give her his arm.  
She obeyed.  
  
Mukuro’s eyes drifted towards the window. The light filtering from outside was the only source of color in the room. As the sun rays fell on her, she felt no warmth. Nothing made her feel warm, not even her sister, not anymore, the only spot of warmth Makoto’s fingers that gingerly locked around her wrist. He clung to her indecisively. Simultaneously afraid to touch her, and also completely unwilling to let go of her.  
  
Before Toko had chased her off the crybaby nurse had given them the basic instructions for treating a wound. Mukuro kept insisting she could do it herself, but Makoto just gently ssshed her. He dabbed a cotton ball with the disinfectant and rubbed it on her arm. 

“I was thinking about the murder earlier.”  
  
“Sssh, that doesn’t matter now.”  
  
“The incidents could all be connected. What if the person blackmailing Maizono, and Togami were the same.”  
  
“When Kirigiri comes back from overseas she can solve it. She’s a lot smarter than both of us. W-well you’re smart at stuff like driving tanks, doing backflips, and flipping tanks." 

“What if there’s a mastermind behind all of this? What if all of the interconnecting threads tie to one person.”  
  
“It could also be three different people. We don’t know. We don’t know anything. We’re not detectives.”  
  
“No, it’s one person. It’s all the fault of one person. One bad person did all of this.” 

“Why can’t we wait for Kirigiri-san?”  
  
“I want to solve it before she gets back!” 

Mukuro’s gift was killing people. She was the culprit, not the detective. She had stupidly thought just for a moment she could be something other than a killer. Because when Makoto looked at her with such tender affection in his eyes, she felt like a different girl. When Kirigiri came back she wouldn’t be able to pretend anymore, Cinderella’s spell would end at midnight.  
  
“I don’t care about that.”  
  
Makoto dragged the cotton ball along her wounds. 

Osamu Dazai once said “The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool.”  
Mukuro made a face of such terrible pain like Makoto was shoving glass into the open wounds on her arms. His kindness cut her deeper than any of the previous scars on her body.  
  
“I hate it when people call me a nice guy. I don’t feel so nice. Even though Maizono-san’s dead, I don’t really want to find her murderer. I care more about the person who’s hurting you.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You’re covered in cuts and bruises that never go away. You’re never there with us in class, you’re always looking down the window.” Makoto had noticed, and that was why he approached her and started eating lunch with her. 

Mukuro tugged at the bandages that Makoto had wrapped so neatly around her arm and tied off like the bow that adorns the top of a present.  
  
“It’s fine. They don’t hurt. I forgave her.”  
  
“I know this is coming from the biggest pushover on earth, but maybe you shouldn’t-”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
Mukuro howled in Makoto’s face. Toko did not even think, Mukuro was capable of shouting so loudly.  
  
“Even if no one else would forgive her, even if she’s the lowest, worst sister, I’ll forgive her.” Mukuro hunched her shoulders and held her bandaged hand and upper arm to her chest as if she was cradling something incredibly precious to her.  
  
“Even if she does it for no reason. Even if she smiles while she does it. Even if she enjoys it. Even if she doesn’t look at me while she does it.”

Her wound was infected, and she was feverish. As if going mad. As if becoming rabid. Drool fell from her lips as she started to talk about it.  
Slobbering dog.   
  
She shouted so loud because she wanted Makoto to understand.  
But that was asking for the moon.  
She cried at the moon.  
  
“I’ll forgive her because I’m the only one who can forgive her,” Mukuro said, and then immediately cut herself off. She stopped herself from feeling. She stared at her feet and muttered in a low voice. “I said too much, I’m sorry.”  
  
Makoto regarded her carefully and softly said. “I don’t think you said too much. I want to be a person you can talk to, even if you feel like you can’t talk or be friends with anyone else in the class - I’m here.”  
  
“But… I don’t want to talk to you.”  
  
She cut him off, too.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I want to show up. Go to school. Sit on my desk. Then go home. No more talking, no more listening.”  
  
“That’s… that’s…”  
  
“It’s what I’m used to.” She pulled her hands away from his. Mukuro quickly dressed in a spare white shirt kept the nurse's office in case of emergencies, throwing her dirty shirt in the trash. She covered herself, up and left.  
  
“I don’t understand…” Makoto’s voice is small and weak.  
  
“Y-you really don’t, do you?” Toko said, to rub it in. “T-those scars are probably precious to her.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“They’re gifts, from her sister.”  
  
Toko had been in the corner of the room, her arms crossed. Makoto suddenly got so close that his toes were touching hers. He stepped over the line between her and other people like it was easy, and then grabbed onto her sleeve.  
  
“Fukawa-san, do you think you can talk to her? You understand these things better than I do.”  
  
Toko bit her lip.  
  
“W-what am I supposed to say? T-things will get better? It’ll be okay? Th-those are just empty words that anybody can say. You could go say to-them.”  
  
Makoto’s fingers slowly let go of her. As if he was giving up. “I bugged Mukuro a whole lot to invite you to with us to Karaoke the other because I thought the two of you would make really good friends…”  
  
“F-friend is just a stupid empty word too…” Toko wanted to hit him but stopped herself. Her fingers were digging into her palms so much, they would bleed, but she had to be careful not to cut herself because even the smallest amount of blood and jack would wake up. “And it’s obvious there isn’t a single person who would ever like me.”  
  
“I think Mukuro likes you.”  
  
“No, she doesn’t. You’re just saying that! It’s easy to just say things! P-pretty words, b-beautiful lies, like Togami said.” Makoto wasn’t even there anymore. Touko put her fingers in her hair, threading them in between her wild, black hair, and then she pulled. 

“Fine. If that’s what you want. I’ll try talking to her again.” Makoto said, once again giving up too easily. “There’s one more thing I wanted to ask you but umm… I don’t know if I should.”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“It’s just umm… you don’t seem very reliable.”  
  
“I’m a reliable narrator!” Toko said, offended. “I’ve written over seventy books. Stringing a coherent narrative together is literally the only thing I’m good at.” 

  
“I didn’t mean like that. We’re talking about real people, not books, you know that right?” Makoto said, and then, “Well, Kuwata-kun’s been locked in his room for almost a week. I thought if you were to visit him it would cheer him up.’  
  
“Y-you want me to cheer somebody else up? Are you completely insane?”  
  
Makoto averted his eyes slightly. “The truth is Togami-kun thinks that Kuwata-kun might know something about Maizono-san’s death. Friend’s shouldn’t suspect each other. If he had someone to talk to, he’d tell us what’s wrong.”  
  
“Togami-sama thinks Kuwata-kun is the murderer.”  
  
“Um, that’s not what I said at all. I know I don’t matter compared to you guys but it still hurts when nobody listens to me.”  
  
“Togami-sama is trusting me to do this for him!”  
  
“I didn’t say that either!”  
  
“Togami-sama, I know I’m an incompetent and unreliable girl, but if it’s for your sake I can do anything!”  
  
And there she went.  
Fukawa Toko ran off towards the boy’s dormitory. 

**NOIRE**

“What was she doing all this time? J-just shaking in her boots at the idea of visiting a boy in his dormitory alone. You’ve been staring into space for twenty minutes, just knock on the door. You c-can do that can’t you?”  
  
She didn’t like the idea of being alone in the room of a boy who was not Togami. She was too scared to knock at the door. Then she remembered she was a stalker. She pulled a lock pick out of her black jacket and fiddled with the lock until it opened.  
  
“Whoa? You couldn’t wait for me to open the door? You must’ve been really excited to see me.” Leon was standing there ready to greet her. He must have heard her coming and quickly gotten out of bed because his sheets were on the floor. There had been several papers that must have been on his wall a minute ago, but he had torn them down leaving only the tape still stuck to the wall. Toko took a step forward into the mess of his room and looked down to see she had stepped on a polaroid photograph.  
  
“How do you like my room? I destroyed it, I thought it was the very punk rock of me.”  
  
“You are p-possibly the least p-punk p-person on the p-planet, you p-ponce.” The p's were hard to pronounce but it was worth it for the alliteration. 

“Huh? Don’t you think I’m a total bad boy?”  
  
“N-no, you’re just bad.” Now that Toko thought about it, Leon had been the one pushing everyone to drink that night. It suddenly became more and more possible to her that he was the murderer. He wasn’t even invited originally, but he had invited himself to the party because he knew Sayaka was coming.  
  
“You know I broke into your room just now. Doesn’t that upset you?”  
  
“Who’d get upset about a pretty girl breaking into their room?” 

“But, I’m not a pretty girl. Please get better taste in people.” Toko figured she should try to make some effort to talk to him. She played with her fingers, untying invisible knots. “H-how come you haven’t left your room?” 

Leon fell back. He was always energetic, but that energy seemed to flare up and die out at random. He was suddenly laying on a bare mattress in the middle of the floor.  
  
“Do you ever feel like a phony?” 

“You mean like how you pretend to be a rock star to get attention? That kind of phony?”  
  
“That’s exactly what I mean! You get it! You get me, man.” Leon seemed too stupid to understand he was being insulted. “Ever since Maizono-san died, I’ve been thinking. When she was alive did I really know her?” 

“Y-you’re just a girl, crazy idiot. An l-lecherous man who wants to use a girl to make himself feel better. Of course, you didn’t know her.”  
  
“Gosh, you always say exactly what you feel, don’t you?”  
  
“Y-yes.”  
  
“You know, I really liked Maizono-san since I first saw her. But, I don’t really think she liked me.” 

Toko crossed her arms over her chest as if she was covering up, hiding. She hated Leon’s red eyes. They burned her. When men leered at her it felt like acid thrown on her skin. Only Togami’s cool eyes felt comfortable. 

“Because Maizono-san was the kind of girl who never said anything.” Leon reached a handout but it stopped suddenly. It was like he was pressing his hand against something invisible. “Even when we were together and like… hangin’ out, It was like we were friends across an unbreakable sheet of glass. She never said anything important about herself. Not to me.” 

“O-of course she didn’t. She didn’t have friends, just fans. You probably just like her because she was an idol.” 

“Yeah, but… what about us? Do you think anybody would care about us if we weren’t the Ultimate Baseball Star and the Ultimate Literary Prodigy?” Leon struck her then as the kind of red that danced on coals and burnt up wood, he was a fire about to go out. “I didn’t ask to be called talented, somebody just stuck that label on me. Do you think anybody loves me… you know. Just, Leon?” 

Toko’s hands traveled over her stomach. Her fingers pulled on her uniform wrinkling the fabric. 

Toko changed the subject. “Why are you acting like this? You’re too stupid to be depressed.”  
  
“You’re right. I should be more cheerful like this.” Leon said, and then suddenly from his back, sprung up, and landed on his feet. He really was a talented athlete. “Thank you! I’m so happy you came! I’m so happy you came!” 

Leon did a little dance. Flaring up, or burning out, he was just fire, and therefore he was unpredictable, unfathomable to Toko. She felt a nagging caution in her chest. He was dangerous, her mother whispered it was dangerous to be alone with men. 

“So you’re here because the others nagged you into cheering me up, right?” 

He pulled his shirt off and started to get dressed. Toko ran from the room like she was fleeing. It suddenly became very uncomfortable for her. Her chest was tight, and it squeezed her lungs as she tried to breathe. Leon just kept on talking casually on the other side of the door.  
  
“I’m uh… surprised you came. I thought you didn’t like me.”  
  
“I d-don’t hate people. They just hate me.”  
  
When he came out the door again he was wearing a white jacket, and he held a book out to Toko again. “There’s a book signing today. I really, really, really want to get this book signed. This book’s been comforting me since Maizono died, the author must know what it really feels like to lose someone.” 

That was why people connected to Toko’s books too.  
She used to write because she thought it would make people feel that out there, someone understood them, but maybe Togami was right and it was all just lies. 

“Takatsuki Sen’s book just came out and they’re doing a book signing. Oh, and there’s this cafe that Takatsuki frequents. Can we go? Can we? Can we? Can we?” 

He was really hyper today.  
Toko didn’t get it.  
How could some people be so damn happy?  
  
“I d-don’t even know why you want me there. I’m n-not really fun to talk to. I’ve got bad looks, and a bad personality, I’m the full package when it comes to ugliness.”  
  
“Please, please, please.”  
  
“Okay, okay. As long as you’re okay with me just sitting next to you and scowling the whole time.”  
  


**NOIRE**

Toko was not good at talking. If someone gave her time to write all of her responses in advance, and she could script out her conversations… she would still probably flub all of her lines. When she was in that house, no matter what she said nothing good would happen.  
  
One day she went mute. 

It was the extreme result of having nobody to talk to. After years of speech therapy, around middle school, she was back to being able to stutter her way through the conversation.  
  
She was surprised her parents even took her to the doctor.  
However, her parents always fed and clothed her.  
They did the bare minimum. Just enough that nobody would scrutinize their household too closely. She was only ever given the bare minimum.

That, and a pair of scissors.

“So they say Takatsuki Sen, the one who writes these super bloody horror novels is like a super cute girl. Can you imagine that? It’s like irony or something.”  
  
“I want to beat you over the head with an iron until you actually learn what the word irony means,” Toko said, as unpleasantly as possible. It did little to ruin Leon’s smile. 

It irked her just a little bit.  
The happier he acted, the more she wanted to see him unhappy. 

“Why are you so girl-crazy, anyway?” Toko said. “Y-you seem to in love with yourself to have a girlfriend.”  
  
“Well, damn can you blame me? I mean I’m cute as hell.” He said as he fussed with his hair. That was probably supposed to be a joke but Toko didn’t laugh. The one who laughed was Jack. “Can I talk about something that happened when I was in high school. Like the year before this one?”  
  
“You might as well.” 

“My first year of high school I got to play in the nationals. I spent the entire year working for it, I didn’t even have a life outside of baseball. I thought it was a really big deal. We got to play in the Tokyo Dome, and it was sold out, so 55,000 people came to watch us that day and as I was pitching I thought…”  
  
“T-too many people, you’re gonna make me hyperventilate.” Toko was only half listening.  
  
“Does any of this matter? I was just one in 55,000 people, and that was a fraction of Japan’s population. The only thing difference between me and other people is that I could throw a ball a little faster.”  
  
Toko could write books.  
It wasn’t something she did for fun, it was more like it was the only thing she could do. If she didn’t write she wouldn’t be Toko. 

“Do you know what kind of girl I like?” Leon asked.  
  
Toko glanced at the line secretly wishing it would go faster. “Any girl with an h-heartbeat?”  
  
“Well a zombie girl would be super cute too, but no.” Just like Toko when she was talking about books, Leon had a fire suddenly lit under him. “I don’t like ordinary girls. But a girl who would kill a guy to make him hers, and then kiss his still warm lips… They drive me crazy. I want to be loved like that, to be obsessed over, to be hated.”

A cold gaze like scissor blades carved from ice.   
Togami looked at her with hatred in his eyes. It became difficult to breathe again. It was like a hand was touching her chest. Arms wrapped around her too tight. Togami wasn’t supposed to look at her like that, he was the only good one. 

“You’re so girl-crazy, and try dating a bunch of girls at once because you want them to hate you?”  
  
“Yeah, I love it when they’re jealous or possessive. But Maizono-san was different. She wasn’t even a tiny bit obsessed with me. She was kind of vacant like her mind was somewhere else.”  
  
“When did you start liking her?”  
  
“It was about a month ago. I actually saw her the day before school began, in the park in the rain. Lightning was cracking overhead, and her hair, and clothes were totally soaked through, and she was swinging frantically, standing up on the swing. She was singing, and she tried to sing louder than the rain. It sounded better than any of her pop songs. When I saw that I thought she was amazing. I thought I had finally met my ideal woman.”

“That just sounds like some fairy tale. L-love, at first sight, is something only a stalker would say.” 

“The kind of girl who doesn’t worry about what she has to do to get what she wants or how it looks. If a guy runs away, she’ll chase him, and chase him. I always felt like if I could meet a girl like that, she’s all I would ever need.”  
  
His story was all over the place. Toko could barely listen to any of it.  
  
“Th-that kind of girl only exists in books.” 

“Huh? Aren’t you a book girl? I thought you of all people would understand.” Leon said, genuinely confused for a moment. “Then, what exactly is it you saw in Togami that made you fall so hard?”  
  
It was similar to the question Togami asked the first time she had confessed.  
What is it exactly you love about me?  
  
"..."   
  
“Sorry, I guess it was rude of me to ask that.” Leon deftly changed the subject. “Have you read The Hanged Man’s Macguffin?”  
  
“I have.”  
  
“I thought you hated her books.”  
  
“I do a lot of things I h-hate. In general, I’m kind of a masochist.” 

The Hanged Man’s Macguffin, it was a novel by Takatsuki Sen, her eighth official work. It featured the stories of several prisoners on death row.  
  
There was one story in particular that grabbed her, like Takatsuki herself had reached into her chest with her own hands and played with her heartstrings to make strange, grotesque music. It was the story of Karao Saeki, a fictional serial killer who went by the name of Torso.  
  
“Oh man, I’ve been dying to discuss the book with someone. What did you think of the guy who cut his lover's arms and legs off? Pretty sick, right?” 

He destroyed the head because the girl would surely insult him. He destroyed the eyes because they’d look at him with disgust. He cut off the arms and legs so they could not run away.  
  
Then he comforted himself with the women’s bodies.  
  
“I don’t know if I want to talk about this. I’m not comfortable… w-well I’m not comfortable with anything really,” Toko tried to change the subject but Leon wasn’t listening to her. 

The killer named Torso wants to see if he can genuinely love a person. He decides on his own after seeing the scars of a policeman that they were the same. The eyelashes upon his pair of watery, large eyes, the countless scars upon his pink flesh, he wanted to be closer to him than anyone else, close enough that the scarred parts of them were touching. 

_He and I must be the same. There is no reason, but I know. Love has no reason. It doesn’t need a reason._ Toko felt fear just reading that sentence. Hemophobia. The fear of blood. Red, ugly red. Blood, blood, blood. Raw meat. That’s all people were. But it wasn’t even people or meat that she found disgusting.  
  
It was herself. 

“Well, we could talk about ‘Black Goat’s Egg’. Do you know what my favorite scene in that is? It’s when she cuts up a lady’s stomach only to discover the woman was a few months pregnant and there was a half-formed fetus inside of it. It was so sick-” 

_I feel sick, I feel sick, I feel sick._ She was sick of the eyes. Sick of the hands. She was sick of being inside of a body that other people were always touching. She was sick of having to bathe every day when it didn’t do any good. _I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick._  
  
So sick she could just puke. 

She pushed Leon out of the way, so suddenly and harshly he fell on his backside. Then she tore through the crowd, not looking at anybody, and not wanting any of them to look at her. She ran away from the bookstore and went to the bathroom to empty her stomach. 

  
  
**NOIRE**  
  


“Oho? Are you alright?”   
  
Toko pretended like she didn’t hear. She was curled around a porcelain toilet, holding onto it for dear salvation.  
  
“Whatever it is I’m sure it’ll be okay.” The voice was condescending like she was talking down from a very high place. “What is it boy problems? It usually is with girls your age. It’s okay. It’s okay. The guy you like will certainly like you back because look at you, you’re so cute.”  
  
Toko wasn’t really paying attention. She had to keep her hair out of the way when she was puking. She couldn’t get her hair dirtier than it already was. Suddenly, a hand reached from behind and gently held her hair out of the way without pulling onto it.  
  
She spat up flowers. Unrequited love. Hanahaki disease.   
That was a lie, she just vomited up the lunch Mukuro had made her today. 

When she was done Toko tried to wipe her fingers with her mouth, but it just made the mess worse. She went to the sink and ran her fingers underneath the cold water. Mukuro said earlier, it wouldn't wash out. 

The lady grabbed a handkerchief from the jacket that was a size too big for her, and then reached up and wiped Toko’s face. It was such a motherly thing to do, it caught Toko completely off guard.  
  
“Who are you?” 

“I’m your long lost mother.”  
  
“What?” Toko was dumbfounded. 

“Just kidding. Just kidding. I wanted to see what face you’d make if you’d say that.” She broke out into laughter. It sounded like a bird cackling. It sounded like an entire murder of crows screaming. “Kids are so dramatic these days. Well, I’m an author so I can’t say I hate drama.”   
  
“An author.” 

“Oh, that’s right. I’m Takatsuki Sen. I should probably be at my book signing. I totally forgot. That’s a big whoopsie. I’m sure they’ll understand, I’m talking to Chan-Toko right now.”  
  
“I don’t really like your books.” Toko was honest as always. 

“Oh, that’s fine. That’s fine. I hate everything I write. if my works were my children they'd grow up with severe problems later on in life.” She had such long hair that it almost reached her feet. If Toko didn’t keep her hair in braids it would probably be that wild and untamed. Takatsuki was much shorter than her, but she stood on her tiptoes so their faces would be closer. “Oh! Oh! What kind of books do you like? You can tell a lot about a person by what books they read. I think a famous author said that. Or maybe I just made it up.”  
  
“I like Fukawa Toko’s books,” Toko said. Just let her be arrogant, she only had one thing to take pride in. “W-what do you think of them?” 

“Hmm, it’s like a mother.”

“Like a...mother?”  
  
“She’s certainly talented. She can make anybody fall in love with the characters she makes, her books are so influential they create literal trends in japan. You can tell she puts a lot of herself into her books. But when I read it, I feel suffocated, like a mother smothering me with love.”  
  
Toko found it hard to talk back to this person. Takatsuki’s words were just so much more confident than her own. Didactic. The author was directly telling the reader something.  
  
“It’s like a mother who really really wants to love their child. So every morning she tells their child she loves them. She writes notes in their lunch boxes. She gets into arguments with the teachers and tells them how wonderful their child is but it’s all so forced…in truth, she can’t stand the kid.”  
  
“W-why would she...?”  
  
“She’s probably just not capable of loving a child,” Takatsuki said.

“W-why not?”  
  
“I dunno. What am I a writer? Oh. That’s right I am. I keep forgetting. Probably because being a writer isn’t a real job. Oh god, if I had to get a real job I’d probably starve to death. Oh, sorry, sorry. Hearing that probably didn’t cheer you up much, huh?” 

Toko’s fingers searched and found her hair. She pulled on her braids. She didn’t like the feeling of her hair being pulled, but that pain grounded her and gave her something to focus on. 

The more Takatsuki looked at her the more she wanted to shrink away. Eyes that were reading her. Eyes that seemed to know everything about her. Toko realized she hated being looked through like she was a book.  
  
“Oh! I know! I’ll give you a palm reading.” She took Toko’s free hand, the one that wasn’t in her hair. She spread open her fingers and tickled her palm. “Oh look, your love line is so long. You’re probably all tied up in knots.” 

Don’t touch me, please.  
The words didn’t come out.  
  
“There’s a boy you like, isn’t there?”

“H-how do you know?” 

She reached forward and pinched Toko’s cheeks. Toko wanted to bite her fingers off. She stopped herself because it was something Jack would do. “I can just tell. They say a woman’s more beautiful when she’s in love.” 

_You’re so cute. You’re so cute._ She played with Toko the same way a person would play with a kitten. Toko got the sense that, if the kitten was strangled, or its stomach was cut open Takatsuki would say in the same lilting voice _you’re so cute, you’re so cute._

“So what do you like about him?”  
  
That question again.  
  
“I love everything about him. There’s not a single thing that I dislike. His grace. His clumsiness. His strength. His fragility. His ice-cold eyes. His blonde hair. The way he’s fun to fluster and…” 

“The way he’s almost certain to never love you back.” Her words were stolen from her. All she could do was stare into the stranger’s mismatched eyes. One was green, one was red. It was like Takatsuki Sen was writing her. Toko was another one of her characters. 

“N-no that’s not. I don’t want to talk about that. The hanged man’s MacGuffin. That character Torso where did you get the inspiration from?”  
  
“Ugh, don’t mention that book. I’m already disappointed with it. It's a child that's never going to earn my love or approval no matter how hard it tries. The killer Torso is just a product of my imagination, what I really wanted to do was have an interview with the serial killer Genocide Jack and write a book based off of that.”  
  
“An interview with a serial killer?”  
  
Takatsuki played with Toko’s fingers. She wove her small, fat fingers in between Toko’s long ones. She knows. Toko thought. She knows she knows, she knows. She read Toko's whole life story. She probably found it droll.   
  
“Yeah! Yeah! I want to meet her in person and ask her something. Oh, but she would probably kill me. Too bad."  
  
“W-what?”  
  
“Well, once I was allowed to interview with the police to consult with my book. One of the detectives let slip a detail about the crime scenes that only the police know. Genocide Jack always goes out of the way to completely bend every finger out of shape before she stabs the hands through the center of the palm.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I wanted to ask her why…”  
  
“D-don’t ask me that!”  
  
“Why she only killed men.”  
  
“How should I know? I’m not a serial killer.”  
  
“And why she destroyed their hands.”  
  
“P-please don’t ask me that.” 

She didn’t want to answer that question.  
She didn’t want to remember why mothers’ had locked her in that closet.  
(They were jealous that she stole the prince’s attention away from them so they punished her).  
She didn’t want to remember - because then love would become an ugly thing to her.  
  
“Do you think it hurts to have your fingers broken like that? What kind of noise does it make like a SNAP or maybe more of a TWANG? What does she do with the fingers afterward, does she eat them? I wonder how the fingers taste. I imagine it'd be crunchy, y'know chewing all the fingers up in her mouth, and breaking apart the bones like crunch, crunch, crunch...” Takatsuki Sen asked her, and then she finally let go of Toko’s fingers. “Oh, sorry, sorry. Everyone’s always saying my brain is grotesque. I don’t see it. I always thought I was a cheerful child.” 

Leon barged in to check on her. He muttered something about how worried he was, and that they missed Takatsuki Sen’s book signing but that it wasn’t a big deal. If she didn’t like crowds they could have fun with just the two of them.  
  
Toko wasn’t really listening. Her head was stuck in a fishbowl, and her own words just echoed and swam back to her ears. Or… maybe a bell jar. 

**NOIRE  
**

Toko sat in a cafe with Leon. The same cafe she had been with Togami the other day. She wondered why he was smiling when there was absolutely no reason to smile. 

Toko was paging through Takatsuki Sen’s novel, not really listening to Leon as he tried to keep the conversation going. _Even if it’s me who is dysfunctional. I too can genuinely love a person._ She became so angry when she read that sentence she ripped the page out. “It’s all so stupid.”  
  
“H-hey, that book is new.”  
  
Toko without looking at him ripped another page out.  
  
“D-did I say something wrong? You can tell me.” 

“Y-you’re the one who killed Maizono-san, aren’t you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I don’t mean you killed her with a knife and made a bloody spectacle of her corpse. I m-mean, you killed her every time you looked at her. You want someone to obsess over you? What is that? What is that? Really, really, what is that?”

“I don’t know man…”  
  
“You don’t. You really don’t, do you? You just want someone to fall in love with you to make you feel special. If you can’t be a special person, then at least you can be special to someone else. But… that’s just bullshit.”  
  
Toko ripped another page out. Books were just lies. Takatsuki Sen was a hack. Out of spite, she crumpled an entire page into a ball and then ate it. 

“You’re pretty foul for someone who-”  
  
“Who writes pretty words, I know. You saw how broken Maizono-san was and fell in love with her? What does that even mean? Do you think it’s flattering for a broken person to hear, Oh, you’re broken but I still love you anyway? You don’t even understand what it’s like to be broken.”  
  
“You’re not broken. How can you say something so terrible about yourself?”  
  
“It’s because I’m honest about myself that I can say it. Actually, people tell me that a lot. Anyone who’s grown close to me says, ‘You’re out of your mind.’, they say ‘abnormal’, ‘ugly’, ‘grotesque’. I don’t mind it, because they’re just telling me the truth.” 

“Fukawa. I thought you said that you were trying to look at ugly things in a new light… that thing about the cracks in pottery…”  
  
Fukawa finally lost all patience and grabbed her drink. She poured all the water out and watched the ink run away on the page. 

“Those were just pretty words. Ugly things are just ugly. Scars aren’t beautiful, they’re just cuts, lacerations, burns, they’re painful. You can’t paper over the cracks with love.”  
  
“What does it matter if you’re ugly though? You’re still trying your best to live, right?”  
  
“That’s not living. You can’t call that active living. It’s just taking. I…I’m not somebody who can give things to others.” Toko hit the book off the table and knocked it away. Her whole body collapsed. 

“You shouldn’t say that about yourself. A lot of people have been helped by your books. There’s a lot of good things about you, even if you can’t see them I can.”  
  
She pulled at her clothing again. She wanted to tear her skin off her body and show him. Just like that woman who tore the yellow wallpaper off, she’d dance naked, madly, in front of him and he’d see everything ugly about her.

Leon reached forward across the table and touched her on the shoulder. The place he had touched felt tainted, like spreading decay. Repulsive, repulsive, repulsive. Filthy, filthy, filthy. 

“Hey, Toko-chan.”  
  
But as he spoke he looked a bit sad. For Toko, it was like staring at a book, and knowing there were words on the page, but her brain refused to read any of the words.  
  
“Be a little bit nicer to yourself. Cuz I…” He said.

Leon needed to stop touching her right now. He was going to leave dirty fingerprints on her skin, like blotted ink, smeared all over the paper.   
  
“I love you."   
  
Leon said.  
Leon said.  
Leon said.  
  
He couldn’t love her, because everyone hated her. He couldn’t love her because she wasn’t lovable. He should hate her. He should kill her. Reach underneath her skirt, steal her scissors and stab it into the middle of her chest, and cut vertically. Then, pull out her internal organs and scatter them like flowers. And then stab the blades into her eyes that did not see anything. Cut off all of her fingers like sausage links because they were not of any use to anyone. Maybe if someone shoved a pair of scissors into her brain it would begin functioning normally. She would go to school every day with scissors sticking out of her eye socket, her eyeball rotting, but she’d be a normal girl and smile at everyone and make friends. Then, cut straight through the skull, and cut the ribs apart to release the butterflies that tickled the inside of her chest. (But those butterflies were dead already). Cut, cut, and keep cutting, the veins like they were so many red strings, and the heart was just meat without any love inside of it. Once punctured, it would leak blood everywhere in a disgusting and embarrassing display like a slowly leaking bladder. Then she would die. Leon should kill her. Just like he killed Sayaka. Did he kill Sayaka? She didn’t know, she just suspected. Well even if he didn’t kill Sayaka he could still kill her.  
  
"I'm s-sorry."  
  
Her voice was the mewl of a kitten that had just been stabbed.   
  
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."  
  
**ROGUE.**  
  


Toko went mute the rest of their lunch together, just like she had when she was a little brat. Leon felt like he had done something wrong. He escorted her back to his room with a guilty look on his face all the time. 

When she was sure she was alone Toko reached under her skirt and pulled out scissors.  
I insist she always wears my scissors in the leather holster wrapped around her leg.   
For protection.  
Then, right through the center of her palm.  
She watched the blood drip from the wound.  
Then staring at the red, she blacked out. 

She just wanted the words to stop. She didn’t want to write anymore. No writing about boys, no writing about the murders, no writing about Genocide Jack, and no writing about Togami Byakuya. 

She didn’t want to write about anything anymore. 

It’s fine, gloomy.  
Even if somebody were to give you their hand, you wouldn’t want it.  
You don’t need a hand.  
All you need is my scissors to hold onto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Books referenced this chapter:  
> No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai (Again).  
> The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath  
> The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.


	5. Parallels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The murder took place in the parking lot of the victim’s apartment complex. The victim suffered multiple stab wounds across the body, believed to have been inflicted with the same scissors that were later used to attach the victim to the wall.
> 
> As with all the other cases, at the scene of the crime, the word “BLOODLUST was written in the victim’s blood. The scissors used to in the murder were apparently custom made, with every pair left at each murder scene seems to be of the same material and construction.

“At that time, as not to get noticed by anyone (even father),

I rewrote the summary,  
Things that cannot be changed can only be broken.

As for me who has left everything needed in the womb. 

  * From Takatsuki Sen’s ‘Dear Kafka’. 



**ROGUE**

Toko doesn’t like to describe her relationship with me.  
She doesn’t want to introduce me to any of her friends.  
In her defense, it’d probably be awkward.  
“Hey everyone, here's my best friend, the serial killer!” 

Nah. 

I get it, but it’s a little bit lonely.  
Even though there are two of us, it’s lonely.

She and I are two of a kind. 

She raises her right hand, and I raise my left one.  
She and I spend our time in the same body.  
  
She is Jekyll, and I am Hyde.  
Jekyll and Hyde were close friends, you know?  
That’s why Jekyll revised his will.  
So Hyde would be taken care of after he was dead.  
He protected Hyde.  
He cared for Hyde.  
When no one else would.  
A woman isn’t one. A woman is two. 

There is no name for our bodies.  
There are two names for our minds.  
Jack the Genocider, and Toko the novelist.  
Opposite minds in the same body.  
  
The front is the protagonist of a novel.  
She investigates, reads everything from front to back cover.  
The back is the antagonist.  
I kill.  
I massacre, snip, snip, cut out all of the pages and destroy them.  
  
Here’s a story for you.  
A man had an affair with two women.  
They both got pregnant and gave birth from the same day.  
One girl died from a medical error, and one girl lived.  
The hospital lost the medical records, and nobody knew whose mother was whose.  
Both mothers refused to check to see if Toko was their child.  
It’s not that they wanted to deny the possibility of losing their own child.  
Rather, they both wanted to believe it was their own child had died.  
Not only had they lost a child, but her mothers had also realized they were seeing the same man.  
Toko was a child who was only loved in the womb.  
When she exited the womb, she left to love and all things necessary behind. 

Once when she was young Toko caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She had been told over and over again, that her half-sister who had been born on the same day had died. Just for a moment when she looked at herself in the mirror, she wondered if that half-sister had looked anything like her. If she had lived, what would that sister be like? Surely, in her perfect innocence, she didn’t know that the image before her was a mere reflection of the light. Instead, she _imagined._ She created something more. On the other side of the mirror, she saw her sister who had died - living behind the mirror, separated by a single pane. That sister could be alive inside of her imagination, and when she imagined someone suffering through what she went through together with her she felt a little less lonely.  
  
I was the first story Toko ever wrote.  
I’m proud of that.  
  
She is me and I am her. Our existence is both the same and different. She is a passive onlooker, and I am the homicidal monster. I kill, and Toko is killed by me. We exist at such extremes it really does feel like there is a mirror between us. Because no matter how close we are, we can’t even talk to each other.  
  
As soon as little Toko, that dreamer of a girl reached out her graceful hand and placed a finger on the mirror all she felt was a void, a cold nothingness. The imaginary and the real can never mingle. We are always together but I can’t comfort her. Fantasy can’t comfort you, the same way a real person can. Toko’s fantasies only exist in her head, and Toko’s fantasies didn’t mean anything to anyone else. Reaching out to touch the mirror she finally realized - her sister was dead and never coming back. In her mind, she had killed her sister a second time.  
  
Where is my mind? Where is my mind? Where is my mind?  
I was here - inside Toko’s body.  
I opened my eyes - Toko’s eyes.  
  
I saw a corpse.  
Leon Kuwata Murder Scene. The body was in a closet, stuffed inside even though it didn’t fit. The body looked quite uncomfortable with space even in death. The body’s feet did not touch the floor. It was hanging there in suspension. It was suspended by a long red string, wrapped around the neck, the wrists, and then tied up to the rack the clothing hung off of.  
  
Red staring, around the neck, the wrists, strangling, choking, squeezing the windpipe, crushing the neck enough to make the head pop off. Leon Kuwata’s body all tangled up in vines, like they were so many snakes. A snake in a garden. The ropes seemed to crawl all over his body refusing to let go of him even in death. There were long burns on his neck. Rope burns. It looked like the kind of impression a snake would leave, snake scales on the skin when it wrapped around the body too tightly.  
  
Red strings. There were several places the body was sewn up in red strings. As if the killer realized halfway through, and then tried to fix the dead body. His eyes were still intact this time, but someone had poked a needle through the eyelids around the eye several times and pulled the red thread in and out, in and out, until the eyes were completely sewn shut.  
  
The same for the mouth. Someone stabbed the lips with a needle, over and over. They would have had to place a thumb between the lips and the teeth and hold the jaw open while they stabbed the upper and lower lips with a needle and tried to sew the lips together with a crisscrossing ‘x’-shaped pattern. The string had been pulled tight and the mouth was shut at the end. There wasn’t a single stitch that was broken or popped so he didn’t scream as he died. He was wearing a pair of "supportive sports underoos", a pair of typical men's athletic black boxers. I'm not into corpses (can't kill someone whose already dead), I just noticed because he wasn't wearing either of his stupid studded glamrock belts. (He usually wore two of them), so his pants were sagging. 

Lastly, the legs were just dangling there. The lower body had been severed from the upper body and then stitched back on again. Gravity caused the stitches to be stretched to their limit. Then, all of the threads broke and the lower half fell away from the upper half of the body. What fell out of the bottom of the torso looked like spam. The intestines fell out of the cross-section like yellow spaghetti, and like a long red robe, the lower intestines still connected the upper and lower half of the body.   
  
I watched it all spill out, the internal organs blooming in such a grotesque manner. As I did, Togami walked into the door. What was he doing here? Well, it was his apartment.  
  
“Toko.”  
  
“I’m sure the cause of death was strangulation like the first time. Those are rope burns around the neck, but the original was strangled by hand there were deep finger imprints in her neck. The kind that would only be left if the body was still alive while it was strangled, posthumously bodies don’t bruise like that.”  
  
“Toko.”  
  
“My guess is the killer came from behind and wrapped a rope around the neck, and pulled upwards. There are absolutely no signs of a struggle and absolutely no sign of the neck being broken. The truth is strangling isn’t always a long and arduous process, if you do it right and cut off a major artery blocking the brain of blood and oxygen it can happen in a few seconds. If you do it wrong it takes hours to die.”  
  
“Toko, you’re Genocide Jack.”  
  
“Toko’s not me. I’m me.” Calling Toko a murderer like that. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him. But I can’t kill him he’s so cute. I turned my neck all the way around my shoulder, it bent at such an angle it looked like my neck was broken and smiled at him. Then I raised my blood-covered hands and said. “It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t do it! He fell on my scissors and got stabbed over and over again by my mommy issues. I plea insanity. I am insanity!”  
  
There was a terrible unease on his face, nothing like his typical expression.  
Well, well, you’re capable of looking like this after all. 

“It doesn’t matter who did it.”  
  
Togami said.  
  
“Oh, Togami-sama.” My voice filled with hope.  
Maybe, finally, somebody had accepted Toko Fukawa. Accepted the both of us.  
  
“It doesn’t matter.”

“Eh?”  
  
I noticed the chill in his eyes. My hope turned into fear. He took one step further and it turned to absolute despair. He repeated it to himself a third time.  
  
“It doesn’t matter.”  
  
He placed a hand on Toko’s face. All she’s ever wanted her whole life was such a simple gesture. To pat her on the hand, or caress her face like it was something precious, and tell her it was okay. I know because I am her darkest desires, except her desires ain’t too dark. She’s a big softie. If you accuse me of being one I’ll kill ya.  
  
For a moment he seemed to be touching all of her, accepting all of her.  
Then he crushed her skull against the wall. 

The last words that flickered in front of my eyes. _Bloodlust._ But. How did I write that? The body wasn’t even bleeding. Wait, who killed Kuwata Leon? That scene didn’t answer any of my questions. I feel like we skipped over something important here… maybe we’ll get back to it later. 

  
  


**BLANCHE**   
  


Toko woke up with her hands bound behind her back. She was tied by ropes, but she might as well have been tied up in red strings. A string that will never break no matter how frayed, or unnecessarily tangled it becomes, she used to think that idea was so romantic.  
  
She tried to struggle against them, but her wrists were cut and burned by the strings that held her too tightly. 

Fukawa looked up and she saw Togami towering over her.  
Her world was just too big.  
Her world was massively towering.  
Togami was her whole world.  
But lately, she had been thinking maybe it was wrong.  
The whole world was too heavy for one person to carry, and towers always fell.  
  
He stepped on the corner of her chair. She quickly observed the scene around her, tied up in his apartment. “You’re into this kinky sort of play? It’s okay, Togami-sama. I won’t tell anyone. This doesn’t change how I feel about you. It’s okay. I don’t care what y-you’re secretly into. I can even change myself to match your i-interests and be your ideal woman.”  
  
“Let’s be honest, you’re far from anyone’s ideal woman,” Togami said, and then did a double-take. “W-wait, why are we arguing like this immediately after you woke up? Do you have an illness where you can only be serious for five seconds!? Stop always saying such idiotic things to me.”  
  
“I h-have lots of illnesses.”  
  
“You must be contagious. Just being near you makes me sick to my stomach.”  
  
“L-lovesickness?”  
  
“Do you listen!? Stop taking my insults as flirting.” He stopped and considered. “Wait a moment, Fukawa. You’re a pretty girl. You’re a flower.”  
  
“I-I’m a weed? I’m ugly? I can’t believe my T-Togami-sama would be so cruel. He was such a kind boy.” Anyway, enough of that. He brushed his fingers over his shoulder like Toko was dirt he desperately wanted to get rid of. Toko could only notice how close he was looming over her. Togami, who she had always watched from afar suddenly getting so close, inviting himself into her little world. He suddenly clapped his face around both of her cheeks. He studied every curve in her face, the bags underneath her eyes, the ugly way her face wrinkled when she was upset. He leaned in like he was going to kiss her but stopped just short of doing that. Then, he whispered a secret just to the two of them. “Let’s be honest with each other. You know I used to read your books when you were younger.”  
  
He told her. He began to tell her a lot of things about himself. When he was younger the only thing his father gave him was the books he left behind in his mother’s apartment. He would open the books, run his fingers along with the pages and wonder if his father’s hands had held the books the same way. 

Polanski Byakuya did not associate with anybody his own age back then. The children in the french apartment complex he lived in, repeated the things their parents always whispered about him. _Filthy child of adultery. He doesn’t have a father._ Byakuya didn’t listen to them. The common people always try to look down on their superiors.

He wasn’t lonely.  
He didn’t need a father. He had his mother, and he had his books.  
  
When he was ten years old, Fukawa Toko made her debut in Japan. He read the french-translation first, and he became so enamored with the book he read it again in the original language. 

_A child who wasn’t able to receive the love they required at the time they needed it the most will gaze at the illusion of affection, like a girl longingly looking in the mirror trying to find something beautiful until the day they die._ _  
__  
__Well, how about me? Can I continue to live?_

When he read that line it reached inside of him and squeezed his lungs so hard, he sang for the first time in his life. He had always been a quiet boy before that, so as not to disturb his mother.  
  
She filled her books with her genuine feelings. When he held his fingers on the page, he imagined that little girl’s hands over his, guiding them to turn the page. Her books gave him the feeling that somewhere out there in the world, someone knew what he was going through. They understood him exactly as he wanted to be understood. They saw him exactly as he wanted to be seen.  
  
Nobody else understood him in that apartment.  
When he came home from school every morning, his mother would caress his face with affection. “You look more and more like your father every morning.” She would say.

His mother told him various lies.  
She used to tell him that he was different from his siblings.  
He was special.  
His father had really loved his mother and was only held back by family tradition.  
If only Togami could win the competition between siblings.  
Then his mother and father would be reunited.  
All three of them would be a family.  
Family.  
His mother repeated that word so many times it began to seem like a lie to him.  
He didn’t need his father to return. He just wanted his mother to smile at him, the way she smiled when he thought of his father. 

His mother poured all of her affection into her only son. She would dress him in all the finest clothes she owned. She cupped his face between both hands and praised him for being a handsome child. She spent so much time with him, she stopped going to work and lived entirely off of a monthly stipend from the Togami family. They could no longer afford to live in Paris and had to move to Japan to live in a run-down old apartment complex. Byakuya grew up in a small, sheltered little world, but to him, the apartment he lived in with his mother was a palace. 

He just wished for one thing.  
That his mother would call him by his name Byakuya. Togami, Togami, Togami. He was beginning to forget what his name was. 

Did you know a child is a mix of the mother and father’s features? How disgusting. When Byakuya looked in the mirror, he didn’t know what his own face looked like.  
  
He couldn’t even see his reflection in other people’s eyes. Nobody ever looked him in the eye. They all just turned their noses up at him. 

The weaker she grew over time, the more she clung to him. Togami realized he had to be strong for her sake. He was a child who needed a mother, but he had to become what his mother needed. 

_His attitude really pisses me off._ _  
__He’s just riding the tailcoats of his parents.  
_  
“I’m the perfect son, Fukawa. Ever since I was born, I’ve been bred, groomed, and raised for perfection. I’ve done everything my parents asked of me, and they’ve given me everything in return.”  
  
 _Why won’t he come for me? I’ve been waiting for him all this time. He said he loved me.  
_  
“You were right. I was born into this world because someone wanted me. Unlike every other mindless sheep on the planet, I was born for a greater purpose.”

 _It’s your fault, isn’t it? He threw me away because I got pregnant with you. If only you hadn’t been born!_  
  
“T-Togami-sama.” Toko knew this story. It was a familiar story. This Togami was in front of her and he looked so sad. Toko leaned forward as far as the ropes would allow her. “What h-happened to your mother?”  
  
“My father got rid of her. He didn’t want her to ruin one of his potential heirs during a critical time in his development. She was damaging the merchandise.”

“Y-you’re not…” Toko was afraid to hear but more than that she was afraid to not know about Togami. “W-what did your mother do to you?”  
  
“Nothing I wasn’t strong enough to endure,” Togami said, and then he touched his neck without thinking. He looked like he was massaging a bruise that had disappeared from his skin long ago.  
  
It didn’t even hurt. When she slapped him. What hurt were his mother's eyes? She wasn’t looking at him. Byakuya slowly realized that the fairy tale world his mother seemed to live in was merely a symptom of her insanity. The words _I love you,_ a delusion.  
  
Wanting love, and being loved.  
It ruined his mother.  
Left bruises on him.  
On his neck. 

_I see. You too._ He thought as his mother refused to look him in the eye. She turned her nose up at him like all the rest. 

“Y-you really loved your mother didn’t you?” Toko asked.  
  
“I used to think I did. I thought I was doing all this for her sake. Have you ever read The Stranger? In french it’s _L'Étranger’”_ _  
_  
“Ugh, we get it you’re French. Stop rubbing it in my face.”  
  
“I don’t want to rub anything in your face. I’d prefer to stay as far away from your face as possible.” He stuck his fingers in her mouth to stop her from talking any further. Gosh, her teeth were sharp. Did she sharpen them with an iron file? “When my mother was taken away to an institution, I didn’t cry at all."

  
  
  
**BLANCHE**

“Do you know who rules the world, Toko?” 

He asked this as he sat in her lap, and put his arm around her. Now the two of them were trying to sit together in the same chair (the three of them if you counted Jack), and their limbs were all tangled up in each other.

She didn’t know where she ended and Togami began. His heart was hers, his lungs were hers, which meant his heartbeat, and his breaths were hers too. She once longed for this but… It was suddenly all too real and too close.  
  
“Th-the T-Togami family?”  
  
“Mice. The key to dominating the planet is propagation. You don’t need to be the strongest or the fastest, you just need to have as many children as possible.”  
  
“M-mice are cute.”  
  
“My family was like that. The head never takes a wife. He couples with an exceptional woman the world over, to bear as many children as possible. They then make the children compete, and only one can come out on top.”  
  
Togami seemed confident, but he was shaking as he said this. She could tell because he was so close to her.  
  
“For my battle, there were fifteen of us in total. When all was said and done, only one of us was still standing - the youngest brother, me. Everyone else died, and I survived.”

His father planted an entire garden. Togami was one of the flowers in that garden. However, all of the seeds planted, all of the children that were meant to be born died. They were never meant to grow up in the first place. The one who had sewn them in the ground planted them too closely. None of them could ever receive the proper nutrients they needed to grow up. Their roots choked each other out. From the moment they were born they had to compete against each other, for all of the basic things needed to survive.  
  
“Do you know how I won?”  
  
“It’s b-because m-my Togami-sama the smartest in the w-whole world, and the b-best at everything.”  
  
“Well that is true, but I wasn’t even invited to the final competition. I snuck in pretending to be someone else. Do you know what happens when rats are hungry and kept in a confined space? They cannibalized each other, and I watched."   
  
One of his sisters lied on the floor. Her eyeball had been scooped out of her skull. He was sure someone had eaten it and licked the inside of her brain.

Her arm twisted and bent back, ruined beyond all recognition. Her stomach had been stabbed through so thoroughly, her organs, including her uterus. Togami did the best he could, dragging her away from the others. He propped her against the wall.  
  
It was like somebody had crushed half of her. Flowers were blooming from her stomach. White osmanthus, White Oleanders, and White Carnations. White flowers were so ugly. He hated them. He’d tear apart every one of the white flowers, and throw them away. Someone had planted seeds in her stomach, pushing up, and they pushed their way up out of her skin, tearing her skin away. They ripped her apart internally, tearing flesh from flesh to bloom. All of those flowers, feeding off of her internal organs to live. I mean, it’s white after all. I mean, it’s white, it’s white, it’s white. White flowers slowly turning red as she bled internally.

Her womb was completely rotten. Raff-Rafflesia. A rotting flower. It opened its petals once a year and smelled like corpses.   
  
This is the part where the story got unclear because it was clearly hard for Togami to tell.   
  
He found one girl in the burning garden, the burning house, and tried to drag her out.  
He didn't, couldn't save her. She was not dead, but she was not living either. 

His sister reached out with her one remaining bloody hand to comfort him. “You’re such a crybaby. Stupid, stupid, baby." She brushed her thumb over his cheek, and in place of tears blood fell and was smeared all over his face. "Why did you do that? As long as I'm still alive your claim to the throne is illegitimate. You should kill me, and the unnecessary things you have to cut off. Kill me. Come on, kill."   
  
She spat blood in his face.   
  
“But she was wrong.”  
  
Togami told Toko.  
  
“I wasn’t crying. I didn’t feel like crying at all. I was happy they were all dead.”   
  


**BLANCHE**

  
“It was so strange to return to peaceful, quiet days after that. My talents are wasted with a class full of idiots like you. No matter where I went, I didn't belong.”  
  
"Even if you tried to b-be with others you j-just felt dirty."   
  
"Don't finish my sentences."  
  
"It's an s-sign we're soulmates."  
  
"It's rude." 

Togami did not have many friends growing up. Then he met a boy who said the word ‘friend’ so easily, and gave away friendship so freely, Togami began to think that word was just another lie. That boy was always late to class, and always with an excuse. He had to walk an old lady home, or a cat was stuck in a tree, or he saw a child drowning in a river only to learn the water was less than a meter deep after he jumped in and hit his head on the riverbed.

That morning, when Makoto was late Togami waited for him by the front of the school.  
He saw Makoto from afar, rubbing his head, a fresh bump probably from another run-in with his terrible luck. 

“Togami-kun.”  
  
“Ah, Naegi.”  
  
“Are you going to grill me for being late again? I’m really sorry.”  
  
“You are of no concern to me, and of course by extension, my plans are of no concern to you,” Togami said, but then, he contradicted himself by grabbing Naegi by the arm and dragging him in whatever direction he was heading. “No, actually… Since you’re here, why don’t you make yourself useful for once in your insignificant little life and come with me.”

“...Eh?”  
  
Togami let go and kept walking with the implication that Makoto should follow. Normally, Naegi was far too much of a goody-two-shoes to skip class but he had difficulty saying no to others. 

“Say, Togami-kun, where are we going?”  
  
“How presumptuous of you. There is no we. As if I’d waste my time hanging out with the likes of you.”  
  
“You’re the one who invited me!” 

Naegi and Togami stood next to each other at the gate. A few of the reserve course students were talking to one another. They were laughing together, sharing food, and one of them had an arm around the other. Togami stared at them. He couldn’t even imagine living a life like that.  
  
Those normal people seemed so far away from him.  
They were standing in a place Togami could never reach no matter how hard he worked. 

“Naegi. I often hear those commoner students skipping school to run around the city. Just, what are they doing?”  
  
“Why’re you asking me? I’m not Mr. Popular.”  
  
“You’re a commoner amongst commoners. Your stats are completely average across the board. A level one villager. So, you should be an expert on these things.”  
  
“Even when you try to praise me it doesn’t feel like a compliment. Where did you pick up that game talk anyway? Have you been talking with Fukawa-san?”

“Implying I have conversations with that woman. Naegi, I know you are the ultimate lucky student but must you always make such a show of pushing your luck?” 

Togami was pushy and Makoto was easy to push around. Togami considered him tolerable, but Makoto didn’t look him in the eyes either. “Well, I’d say they go hang out and eat together, and watch the sunset I guess."

“How boring… A complete waste of time. The sunsets every day how common.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess you’re Mr. Fancy Pants, so you probably spend all that time… Pants shopping… For fancy pairs of pants.”  
  
“Let’s go, Naegi!”  
  
“Wait, what!”

Togami and Naegi stopped to get a burger. When they ordered their food Togami asked what the chef’s recommendations were only to receive a big stare. He took a bite out of his burger only to drop it as his whole body started to convulse. He coughed and spat out chunks of meat.  
  
“Th-they tried to poison me.” 

“N-no, that’s just what it tastes like.  
  
“The quality of this patty is substandard. There’s too much oil! How is this even considered edible? Do commoners not have tongues?”  
  
“T-Togami-kun. You’re making a scene.”

Togami wasn’t really that surprised by the taste of a hamburger. It was something that Makoto had said that caused him to choke. When they first sat down and began to eat, Makoto said _You could bring a girl here if you really wanted to._ The idea of being near a girl, touching her, bedding her, as his father did. He would ruin her. One day he would be expected to ruin women just like his father.  
  
He wasn’t a normal boy. He wasn’t even human. He was a breeding animal. He was like the cows he had eaten in that hamburger. He was born and bred for a purpose.  
  
“You really are troublesome, Togami-kun,” Makoto said as he watched Togami make a fuss. 

“That’s quite hard to buy coming from the class’s number one troublemaker?”  
  
Makoto pinched his own cheek. He did have, childish, round, pinchable cheeks. He was so baby faced. “Look at this sweet innocent face? Does this look like the face of a troublemaker to you?”  
  
“I’m so sorry I ruined your expensive suit, Togami-kun! I didn’t mean to trip on my shoelaces and pull down the fire alarm. Togami-kun, can you bring me to the nurse’s office, someone threw a bottle out the window and it hit me in the head. Togami-kun, can you pick me up, I somehow got on the wrong bus and now I’m in the middle of a hostage situation.” 

“N-no, I just meant like. You’re being kind of fussy. I just thought you’d be like. ‘What is a hamburger. Is this what poor people eat?’ How fascinating.’ Then you’d get the meat munchies.” 

“Is that your impression of me? You really don’t understand me, Naegi. Or perhaps it’s people you don’t understand.” Togami took another painful bite of his hamburger. He forgot his manners and spoke with his mouth full. “I’ve eaten hamburgers before. My mother used to make them for me.”  
  
“You had a mother?”  
  
Of course, I had a…  
Togami had not thought about her for years. The thought that one day he would just like his father, and he would have to…  
He thought of the men who did those things to his sister.   
Then he remembered how much he resembled them and felt disgusted in himself all over again.   
  
Togami suddenly pushed himself away from the table and went to the bathroom. He emptied the contents of his stomach on the porcelain bowl. Togami had no idea why he was acting like this. He was a disgrace.

Makoto waited for him outside.  
The idea that Makoto was pitying him, looking out for him, helping him, was disgusting.   
He hated Makoto and hated himself for being just a little bit happy that someone worried about him.   
“Now, Tadaaaaa! Look! They’re sea-salt flavored that should help with your nausea if your stomach is still bothering you.” 

The two of them snuck in school after hours and climbed onto the school roof. Naegi reassured him this is what normal students did. He had done this with his friends a long time ago.  
  
“Look out for any banana peels Naegi, what if you slipped on one and fell off of the roof?”  
  
“I’m not that clumsy!” 

When they were sitting on the ledge together, Makoto tore off the wrapping and bit on his ice cream. He looked at the stick underneath. These ice cream bars were a special brand with a chance to win a free bar if 'Winner' was printed on the sick. “Ah, I didn’t win again.”  
  
“Luck is supposed to be your one good point, Naegi.”

“I guess I’m worthless then.” Makoto stopped to consider for a moment. They had made their way outside the mall, and now their shadows were touching, overlapping in the late evening son. “But you know, I think I really am a fortunate person. If I hadn’t come to this school an ordinary guy like me would never have been able to walk beside someone like you, Togami-kun.” 

Beside?  
How irritating. Togami looked to Makoto, and then to the concrete below. He marveled at how easy it would be to push Makoto off and watch him fall.  
He was a trusting fool.  
He was able to trust people, unlike Togami. 

“What flattery. Are you finally recognizing me as your better, Naegi?”

“I’m different from you. All our classmates have such amazing talents, but I’m not like them. I don’t think I’ll ever be like you either, but today to be able to hang out with Togami-kun like normal friends, it made me really happy.”

Makoto smiled.  
  
“Togami-kun, thank you for letting me tag along today.”  
  
Makoto laughed.  
  
“I know I’m only a bother, but I’d really like to follow you again sometime.”  
  
The sky behind Makoto seemed endless.   
Blue, just like Makoto's eyes.  
But there was nothing to see.   
Makoto was another person who was not looking him in the eye.   
  
Makoto made it all look so easy. Makoto smiled in a way Togami never could. Togami watched him, calculating and recalculating. He was certain now. The person in front of him was someone he could never understand. Makoto was born with parents who loved him, and therefore he was born with all the things Togami was lacking. 

“That attitude of yours really pisses me off.”  
  
“Huh, did I say something wrong? You don’t need to be anything special, Togami-kun I like you for who you…”  
  
“You don’t know who I am.” Togami threw his ice cream down on the roof and stomped on it in a childish tantrum. The ice cream stick said ‘winner’ but Togami didn’t care, so he stomped it until it broke. Togami didn’t need worthless things like luck to live. “You’re so spoiled, Naegi.” 

You were given everything.  
A family.  
Friends.  
Love.  
The things Togami could never earn no matter how hard he worked because they had no monetary value. Togami had been trying so hard, to find a way to live, to survive, without all those necessary things.  
  
Togami had been called spoiled over and over again. Makoto’s eyes, clean, pure, unspoiled. He only smiled that way because nothing bad had ever happened to him in his life. “You’re the spoiled one, not me!”  
  
Makoto truly was lucky.   
He would never know, never understand, how lucky he was.  
  


**NOIRE**

**  
**“T-Togami-sama.”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Togami warned her sharply, and then. “My story is not finished yet. Hey, Fukawa, you’re like two different people. The girl who writes those intelligent books, and the delusional fool. Which one of them is the real you? I’ve been watching you all this time, and I still don’t know.” 

Somewhere deep in his heart, Togami had been looking forward to Fukawa Toko in person.  
When he saw her name appear on the class list he felt a strange tremor in his chest.  
He was attending high school with the strange, reclusive author who never made public appearances. A girl, who wrote her books with such honesty and emotional intelligence.  
  
When he was all alone he sometimes wondered what meeting her in person would be like.  
He wondered what it would be like if they were to read a book together.  
Both of them were reading from the same page.  
If she read a little slower than him, he would wait for her to catch up.  
When they went to turn the page at the same time, their fingers would touch.  
  
He could tell from her books that Fukawa Toko was someone who faced hardship and overcame. He wondered if she was the same as he was. If she had ever, held onto a book like it was an old friend, and felt in her heart that maybe there was someone in this world who could understand her.  
  
Two children reaching out for hands to hold.  
And only finding disdain from the adults around them.  
Turning to books for comfort.  
  
That too was just a story that Togami had written in his own head. The one person he thought might understand him, turned out to be a lovesick fool. She confessed to him on the first day of school. When she said she saw something in him, his heart leaped in his chest, but then it fell into a deep black pit of tar within him when she started to describe what sounded like a prince from a fairy tale. The person Fukawa Toko had fallen in love with was not him.  
  
Nobody looked at him and saw Byakuya.  
  
At that moment Byakuya wanted to grab her by the shoulders and scream in her face. He wanted to grab one of her books and tear all the pages out. He felt the urge to shatter her like a glass mirror, perhaps because she really did reflect him in some ways. He wanted to put an end to her delusions.  
  
He threw away his copy of Blue Thread from the Scarred Mountain right in front of her.  
He had read through that book over and over again.  
He had been planning on asking her to sign it.  
But, perhaps it was better he let go of that book.  
Toko’s books were full of love, and Togami was beginning to believe he didn’t deserve that love.  
  
If it was just a lie anyway, he didn’t want it.

“No matter how much my mother loved him, my father couldn’t return any of her love. I don’t blame him. It’s because he was a Togami. I think a child born between two parents who don’t love each other, is lacking something fundamental.”  
  
“D-don’t tell me that.”  
  
“It’s disgusting, isn’t it? If I had to describe myself in one word I would say scum. I do everything for myself. That’s my true nature. Rational and overly cold-hearted. I was like that, since the very beginning.” 

“P-please, stop!” 

“I haven’t been concerned for anyone, I’ve never felt the need to. I couldn’t have cared less about others! And even now, I don’t give a damn about them!”

She was trying not to tell him that she loved him for once because she knew he wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe those words from anybody. She was trying to choke down the feeling, and she was trembling, but then he reached down and touched her. No words existed to describe the feeling of being touched and held by him. Toko felt her heart taking root in her body. She didn’t have any words to express what she was feeling, there was no name for this, and even if she could Togami wouldn’t understand.  
  
But, she had to try anyway.  
Maybe it was true.  
She didn’t love him.  
She didn’t love herself.

But she wanted to.  
Hearing all of that, she only wanted to love him more.  
  
She had a confession. She wasn’t a very good writer. She didn’t think so, anyway. No matter how hard she tried, the words that came out were never good enough to express what she really felt. And, Togami probably felt dissatisfied with the story he had just told her too. Even though he had told her everything, she still didn’t understand him.  
  
The truth is she always wanted someone to read her books, and to completely understand how hard and painful it was, wanting to scream and cry but not being able to express it. She wanted someone to understand her completely, but…  
  
But even understanding a little is okay.  
  
“Stop telling that story with that incredibly sad face like you’re holding back tears.”  
  
“It’s not a sad story. It’s a story of triumph. I didn’t lose to any of those circumstances. There’s no way I’ll lose. Absolutely not. Fundamentally. Back then, right now, and from now on, I will win. I will win, and win, and keep winning. I’m…”

“Hey, Byakuya-sama.”

“I’m a child of God.”

“Byakuya-sama. Do you know what I love about stories?”

Toko felt like all she ever did was crawl, like a worm. A book worm.  
Even if she could not walk by his side.  
She could still crawl. Crawling, and just living.  
If you are a bug, an insect.  
Then struggle.  
Struggle pathetically.  
Chew through the pages, and you can be in the story too.  
  
“Shut up. I’m done. Story over.”  
  
“I love how two different people can read the same story and have the same feelings about it. And I also love how two different people can read the same story and have completely different feelings. The story you told me -”  
  
“It disgusted you, right? I always knew, how you really feel about me…”  
  
“My Byakuya-sama. He’s such a weak boy. He’s such a kind boy. He was always just doing his best. He was always just pushing himself too hard. Everybody expects too much out of him.”  
  
“You…”  
  
“I expected too much of him. I’m sorry. I never should have asked for a prince.”

It was so awkward. She looked him in the eye. His eyes shone with terrifying beauty. She was embarrassed. She was blushing red. She didn’t know what to say. Even though she was an author, she was terrible at coming up with the right words to say. Her throat felt dry. She suddenly became excruciatingly aware of all of her imperfections and prayed to herself that Togami would not notice them as he stared at her.  
  
It was a bit like staring at a blank page. Writing, whether it was a love letter or a novel, both of them were equally embarrassing. She felt so much shame she wanted to die.  
  
But…  
It was exhilarating too.  
How, did she forget such a simple thing.  
  
She reached out to touch his face. There wasn’t a mirror, there wasn’t glass, there wasn’t anything between them.   
There was nothing in her way. 

“Byakuya-sama. I’m glad you like my writing. I w-was thinking of things I could do for you. You don’t have to. You d-don’t. But. If you ever want to talk to your mother again, I could help you write a letter.”  
  
How did she forget that she was in love?  
She fell in love with a boy on the first day of school.  
He asked her why.  
She thought he looked lonely.  
That was all, that was it. There was no grand meaning behind this ever-winding story.  
  
Wet.  
Tears fell on her face from Togami up above.  
A child left alone in the raise.  
Wet, fat tears, rolling down his face.

The snow melting.   
Togami took off his glasses. “What is this?”  
  
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know… what that is either.”  
  
Toko had never cried since the day she had been born. Togami was crying now. Her hands had been free a long time ago. She sawed herself out with a pair of scissors. She had just pretended to be held captive because she wanted to stay until the end of his story. She stood up closing the distance between them and kissed him right on his eyelid.  
  
Even though it wasn’t wanted.  
Even though he didn’t want her.  
  
If she had to describe her affection for Togami, he was someone she wanted to be like. He was someone strong, who tried to do his best for others. She knew she wasn’t there yet, she was still always clinging to others, but one day, one day she wanted to be by his side.  
  
That was her real reason for always following him around. She had almost lost it in all the delusions. 

He pushed her away.

 _Why am I, the great me, of all things?_ _  
__Why do I find this girl so irritating?_

Togami immediately after pushing her away, pulled her closer. In a shaking, husky voice he said. “Why is an infinitely disappointing girl like you… always shaking me up so badly? Why do you say these idiotic things to me?” 

He pushed her away again.  
She spun and hit the floor. Jeez, what was this tango?  
He left her there.

Toko closed the closet door so as not to look at the ugly, thing, and went to the full-length mirror. Slowly slowly, the braided book girl looked upon herself.  
  
 _I’m glad I was able to meet him._  
She didn’t hate what she saw as much as she once did.   
Even if it was a dream as ephemeral as a flower reflected in the mirror, as the moon floating in the water.  
Even though she knew she’d have to wake up from her dreams eventually.  
Even if Togami never loved her back.  
Even if they could never be together. 

_I’m glad._ _  
__I’m glad I was able to meet you, Togami._ _  
__I was happy._  
  
She had to keep telling this story because this story no longer belonged to just her alone.  
It was theirs.


	6. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junko held a gun to my head and forced me to give her at least one scene. Tw: For sibling abuse, and chemical burns

“I finally lost my grasp on reality, and I started climbing the steel tower. 

The handrails I touched all turned black and rusted.  
(I knew I was made of poison).  
(No, it was that woman who was poison itself.)

  * From Takatsuki Sen’s ‘The Black Goat’s Egg’. 



  
  


**NOIRE**

  
Toko collapsed three meters away from Togami’s apartment.  
It was from anemia.  
It was from blood loss.  
It was from a hemorrhage.  
Toko saw red strings at the edge of her vision, but they were probably just veins bulging at the back of her eyes. She had always been able to see strings, the connections between people, but they confused her more than anything.  
  
She was bleeding from her skull still and bled out in the fresh snow that had fallen sometime between last night this morning. Her brain was a red ball of yarn and it was unraveling.  
  
Strings were always pushing and pulling. People run into each other and get tangled up in one another, Mukuro was running on her morning 4 - kilometer jog in heavy boots.

The pathway was dark, save for one flickering light. One small, weak light. It reminded Mukuro of someone. An annoying guy, who kept popping into her head when she least expected it, whenever she least liked it. She had been quite restless lately, because of him.

Running away for three years to a terrorist cell in the middle east didn’t change anything. Being in high school didn’t change anything. She couldn’t grow close to anyone, and they couldn’t grow close to her. For Mukuro it would always be her and her sister. She didn’t like anyone else but her sister. She didn’t like herself much, either. It wasn’t long before her schoolmates got the picture, and after a month everyone stopped trying to be friendly with her and mostly left her alone. All except one person. There was one classmate who treated her as a friend. He was a normal guy, not special in any way, there was one personality trait Mukuro could assign to him: annoying. So very, very, annoying. He had grown so incredibly close to her - like a pulmonary vein if she cut it now she would bleed to death. 

He popped into her mind again. Him and his dumb smile. She saw red. Red wasn’t the color of love, it was the color of blood. She stopped and saw blood leaking out from Fukawa Toko’s head, giving the snow around her a brand new paint job. Mukuro got closer, her military jackboots were covered with a wet, sticky substance.  
  
Mukuro thought red was the prettiest color. She pulled the leather glove off her hand. Gracefully, elegantly, she touched the blood that was running on the ground. She streaked the liquid on her lips, one drop escaping onto her cheek giving her another freckle. Her body moved like she was being puppeteered like invisible hands. She looked at herself in the window of the nearby apartment building. She touched her cheek. It was the first lipstick she had ever worn. “I’m so pretty, just like you… Junko-chan.”

Mukuro kicked Toko. 

“Are you dead?”  
  
“Nooooo.”  
  
“Oh. Okay. That’s too bad.”  
  
Mukuro didn’t even ask why Toko was bleeding. She was good at not asking questions. Mukuro took a few steps around her body in the snow and then knelt in front of her, holding her hands out as she offered her back.  
  
“Get on top.”  
  
“I’m actually more of a bottom.”  
  
“Wow, you actually think you’re clever? That’s sad.”  
  
“S-shut up?”  
  
“I was just asking…”

Toko climbed on in the clumsiest way possible. She was usually trying to coordinate her body with half a brain because Jack took up so much space, but now she only had a quarter to work with.  
  
“I’m not going to say thank you or anything. I’ve never said thank you, or complimented anyone since the day I was born.”  
  
“Well, I’ve never heard thank you, or been complimented since I was born so it’s not a big deal.”  
  
“If-feel like you’re not listening to my complaints.”  
  
“Hm. Did you want me to let you bleed to death?”  
  
“I c-can’t believe you’d just leave me there to die.”  
  
“Should I drop you? Would that make you happy?”  
  
“I’m never happy.”  
  
“I know. Just like my sister.” Mukuro said, with a small sigh. “I sense more complaining in you.” 

“A-and another thing! I don’t need a babysitter!”  
  
“When’s the last time you ate?”  
  
“Um.”  
  
“Slept? Changed your clothes? Did laundry? Were you going to just go back to your dorm without getting that head wound checked out?”  
  
“Um. Um. Um. UMMMM!”  
  
“It sounds like you need a babysitter.” 

“Nobody has ever taken care of me in my life.” Toko heard the sound of Mukuro’s feet sinking into the snow and lifting out, over and over again, with the added weight of Toko on her back - it must have been a lot. “I don’t need you to play big sister. I don’t need an f-family. Never have, never will.”  
  
“That’s depressing.”  
  
“Family I… I don’t even know what that word means. Hey, what is it?”  
  
“I dunno.”  
  
“Don’t I dunno me! You were supposed to say something deep and profound.”  
  
“I’m not deep.”  
  
Toko crossed her hands over Mukuro’s neck and held on tightly. She felt warm and safe, and it was a feeling she was completely unfamiliar with because she had never been carried like this before. Not even when she was an infant.  
  
“Why are you so obsessed with family anyway? What do you consider her? Yours alter ego? Your other self?”  
  
Toko didn’t want to be around anybody.  
She didn’t tolerate people’s presence well.  
Yet, she leaned her cheek against Mukuro’s back and felt oddly comfortable.  
  
“That’s a stereotype for twins. That would be like someone with dissociative identity disorder having another personality that’s a serial killer.” Mukuro deadpanned, and then. “Junko is Junko, and I’m not Junko.”

“Gosh. Do I even want to try analyzing that?”  
  
“Then, don’t. It’s not something you’d understand. You can’t even take care of yourself, but as the older sister I have to take care of her.” Mukuro barked, Mukuro snapped her teeth.  
  
Toko suddenly remembered she was a tiny, weak little cat. She mewled. “... I had a sister.”  
  
Mukuro immediately softened. “What happened?”  
  
“She died before I got to meet her.” Toko hid her face in the fabric of Mukuro’s shirt like she was ashamed of herself. “I w-would have been a terrible sister.”  
  
“That’s not true.”  
  
“I hated everyone in that house. I w-would have hated her too.”  
  
“Toko-chan.”

“Don’t call me that! Don’t say my name in a soft voice because you w-want to pretend you care-”  
  
“I don’t. I don’t care.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“You wouldn’t hate her.”  
  
“H-how do you know that?”  
  
Mukuro stopped then. The whole world seemed to stop. The snow was suspended in the air. Gravity ceased to function. All clocks everywhere stopped ticking. The world was truly frozen as molecules ceased bumping into each other in the air. That one moment, everything was transparent, clearer than glass. She could see how everything hung on the smallest of strings. The world, and Mukuro, all of it seemed so incredibly fragile. 

“Do you know why the older sister is born first?”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“To protect their younger siblings. They may hate you back, but it’s your job to love them. If you don’t, you’re disqualified from being an older sister.”  
  
Ah.  
Mukuro warmly talked about her sister and smiled genuinely to herself. She had been holding onto her sister so closely, her fingers were probably all broken from the effort but she did love her.  
  
“I’m Genocide Jack. I’ve killed a lot of people. I might have killed Maizono-san and Kuwata-kun, and three more people.” Toko said, suddenly.  
  
“I already knew. My sister is a serial killer. She’s told me to kill a lot of people. I was going to blackmail everybody in our class into killing each other.” Mukuro said, just as sudden.  
  
The liar revealed was a literary trope, where two characters keeping secrets from each other finally confessed but:  
  
“I d-don’t really care.”  
  
“Yeah, me neither.” 

_We are just two people who don’t care about each other. Good. I’m glad we agree. Caring about you would be too much. I already have a precious person._  
  
Mukuro was terrible at conversation but kept talking so Toko would not fall asleep with her head injury. Toko said it would be fine if she disappeared then Jack would puppet the body. Mukuro told her it wasn’t fine. Mukuro told her so many stories about her sister.  
  
Mukuro set her down on the floor. Then picked her up again, bridal style, and laid her in the bed of the nurse’s office. Mukuro picked her hand up, and then pressed her dry, cracked, dead-looking lips to the back of her hand and kissed.

“What are you, my prince?”  
  
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” Mukuro said with her usual enthusiasm. It was then that Toko noticed that a little bit of the blood from Mukuro’s lips had gotten onto the back of her hand. The last thing she remembered seeing was Mukuro’s eyes.  
  
Milky white, like a dead person’s eyes.  
Her own, faded lilac, dead flowers.  
  
When she woke up in the hospital the next morning, there was a name carved into her arm. It was a note from Genocide Jack. ‘IKUSABA MUKURO DID IT. DUMBASS.’ 

**NOIRE**

Toko had followed Mukuro all the way to the neurology lab in the biology building, to investigate the tip that Jack had given her. Jack sometimes made her wake up with 'Kick Me' signs on her back, but she wouldn’t lie to her. 

As Toko followed Mukuro, and then watched from just outside the door she realized that the skills of a detective and the skills of a stalker had a lot of overlap, actually. 

There were three monitors set up on a computer on a desk low to the floor. There was no furniture in the room, except for the computer desk, a microwave, and sparse shelving. There wasn’t even a futon but a sleeping bag that had been left unzipped on the floor.  
  
There was no chair for the computer, just a large pillow she sat on that had the face of a black and white bear on it. The long t-shirt she wore also had the same logo on the chest. She tied it off at her hips with a knot, and it just barely covered her underwear. There was a water bottle on the computer desk. There were several cans littered at her feet. There were more water bottles, discarded on the floor, and some crushed. Images on the computer monitors flickered by. It was just security footage of students idling about on their day, and yet she watched it with such rapt attention as if it were a horror movie, or a thriller, or perhaps something pornographic.

There were several drawings pinned on the wall. Was that Evangelion Fanart? It was drawn really well, Toko thought. Some pages had been crumpled up and thrown away, Toko unfolded one of them and saw blueprints for the kind of death trap a James Bond villain would design. There were several clothes littered on the floor, but almost all of them had been torn apart. The stuffed animals too were all strangled with the stuffing coming out. There was a Rubix cube on her desk, but it had been torn into pieces with all of the colored stickers peeled off. There were anime figurines, but all of them had been half-melted as if held over a burner, the rest mutilated in some fashion. 

A makeup mirror. Lights. Enoshima Junko’s dressing room. In the middle of all of this casual and lazy destruction, this mess, where she was she was the only thing in the room that looked untouched, a perfectly unblemished beauty. When she didn’t move she looked like a doll. Specifically, it was her eyes, like a doll with a human soul inside that couldn’t speak, or even move, so it screamed with its eyes. Enoshima Junko was funneling ramen noodles into her mouth, and scarfing them all down. 

Toko was taken aback for a moment - she thought Enoshima Junko had completely lost her mind, but this just looked like a normal shut-in. The door opened, she stilled her breathing.  
  
“My sister’s become a neet. I worry about her future,” Mukuro muttered to herself. “Junko-chan, I brought you some tea.”  
  
Junko’s movements were jerky, like a robot whose wires were frayed, and because of that, the signals sent to move the body got all mixed up. Uncanny valley. She tilted her head all the way to one side. “Ugh, Muku-chan I asked for you to mix every single drink from the soda fountain together. Why didn’t you do that”  
  
“Um, because it would taste terrible. You asked for tea.”  
  
“I changed my mind. Anticipate my needs, Muku-chan! I change! From moment to moment! You know what they say, fashion, is fashion, is fashion. Well, Enoshima Junko is Enoshima Junko, is Enoshima Junko. Wait, who am I again? I’ve lost myself. I need to go on a fucking sabbatical and find myself.”  
  
“You’re right here,” Mukuro said quietly as she poured the tea. 

“Oh, no duh! I’m fine. I mean, really fine. I mean I’m really really fine, I’m falling in love with myself all over again.” She hit herself in the head repeatedly as if trying to get a broken television showing only static to function. Each successive hit made Mukuro flinch.

“I’m glad.”

“Hey, you know how people have god complexes. I’m pretty sure God has a Junko-complex. I bet he’s totally jealous. He didn’t even create me, I created myself. I am. I am. I am…”  
  
Her eyes suddenly emptied.  
Like a cracked flower vase, everything spilled out, and whatever flower put inside would wilt. When Mukuro tried to hand Junko the tea…  
  
“I’m so tired. Of seeing your face. Every. Fucking. Day. Hey, hey, can you photoshop your face Mukuro? Just drag the mouse and erase all those stupid freckles. Actually, actually, can you photoshop yourself out of my life?” 

Mukuro dropped the cup by accident.  
It fell on the ground and chipped.  
  
“What do you think you’re doing? Seriously, I mean. Seriously. Facetiously? No I mean, seriously. CLUMSY ISN’T A QUIRKY PERSONALITY TRAIT MUKURO. It’s not even a real flaw. It’s superficial!”  
  
“I umm… I dropped a cup and broke it.”  
  
“You just destroyed my whole world. Casually. Like it was nothing. It’s all falling to pieces and shattering, Mukuro, all because of you.”  
  
“It’s just a cup.”  
  
“That’s not what I’m talking about! This cup is a metaphor for our relationship! I mean, duh, obviously!” Junko raised her voice to a scream as Mukuro was having trouble trying to sweep the broken pieces of the cup off of the messy floor. “Ugh, I should have just eaten you in the womb Muku-chan. Always having to explain this shit to you is so annoying.”  
  
“It was an accident. You don’t have to be so dramatic.”

“My whole life is drama, and it’s a tragedy and comedic, and every other genre. I defy, genre and defy convention, and I’m… What am I doing again? Why… Why am I always yelling at my Muku-chan?”   
  
Junko noticed when Mukuro cut herself on her thumb. A single drop of blood, running down her hand and falling onto the floor in a line like a red thread. She reached out and tenderly touched Mukuro’s hand. It opened for Junko.  
  
As if to comfort her.  
As if to feel something soft.  
  
She cupped her hand under Mukuro’s then - forcibly closed Mukuro’s fingers on the jagged and broken pieces of porcelain.  
  
“Do know what listening to you is like - it is sooooo boring. We get it. You have a sister complex. That’s me, I’m the sister, I’m the complex, find something new. Just find a new personality… just die already and be reborn as someone else..”  
  
“Junko-chan…” Mukuro was bleeding but she didn’t even flinch away, from either the pain or the blood.  
  
“You’re not sorry. You’re not the one doing this. Or maybe you are? Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Why Muku-chan? Why are you hitting yourself?” Junko said, taunting her like a younger sister might. Then an awareness, a single flickering light in what was pitch black. “What’s wrong. You’re trembling. Are you scared?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You must wonder why I’m suddenly treating you like this? Why does everybody hate you.”  
  
“I don’t know why.”  
  
“It’s because they have eyes. It’s because they’re looking at you and they’re disappointed.”  
  
“I should apologize to them I guess.”  
  
“You remember when our parents used to say ‘this is going to hurt me more than it’ll hurt you, what a dumb thing to say.” Junko peeled off the leather glove from Mukuro’s left hand to her face and kissed it. It was a tender gesture of affection. It was the first time during their entire conversation, Mukuro looked scared. It left a red, lip-shaped mark on the back of her hand wet like saliva. “This is poisoned lipstick, this will hurt worse than you far worse than it’s going to hurt me.”

“Uh…” 

“It hurts me when I hurt you? I mean what is that bullshit even? Guilt? Regret? Why do people hurt other people then waste time feeling sorry for themselves - the truth is they wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t so goddamn fun.”  
  
The wet saliva on the back of Mukuro’s hand-mixed with whatever poisonous compound was in the lipstick, and whatever Junko poured out from the water bottle she had grabbed from her desk and spilled all over Mukuro’s hand. 

“Why?”  
  
“The only way to remove a tattoo from the skin is to burn it off.”  
  
Junko had always hated the three years they spent apart.  
  
“It’s m-mine. It’s… the only thing that’s mine.”  
  
“Wow, you hate sharing, don’t you? This is just like when we were kids and you wouldn’t let me play with your stuffed rabbit and then cried when mom made you give it to me. Actually, it’s nothing like that. Or is it just me you hate? Gosh, you try to kill a chick and suddenly she’s got beef!” 

The back of her hand was on fire. Burning. Burning. The pain wasn’t just mind-numbing, Mukuro’s brain wanted to melt. Imagine feeling pain for the first time after years of numbness, and it was the feeling of your skin being pulled back layer by layer. Internally, Mukuro could hear the sound of tearing like velcro as the layers separated.  
  
Mukuro tried to wrench her hand away but Junko wouldn’t let her. Toko thought other people’s hands were painful, terrifying. Junko’s fingers tied into knots with her fingers, hands placed on top of her hands, in the blood that is slowly pooling up. Junko said to pay attention. Junko said this is the greatest moment of Mukuro’s life. Junko said it, so it was true.  
  
“Because everything is a story,” Junko said. “But everything isn’t a story, not really. That’s why nothing matters, and that’s why it all matters.” Junko said, Junko said, Junko said, Junko said, Junko said, Junko said, Junko said, Junko said. This is the greatest moment of our life.  
  
“Can you even read Muku-chan? No wonder you never pay attention in class. You never pay attention to anything. You just stare out the window. I wasn’t given enough attention growing up. I mean, I was given all the attention, all of it, but it still wasn’t enough for me.”  
  
Wax dripping down from a candle, falling into her skin as liquid and then burning and hardening over the burns. A cigarette pressed down and then rubbed into the hole that’s burned into her flesh. A red hot poker removed into the fire and then her back was beaten by it over and over again.  
  
Mukuro had endured all of this in her training to be resistant to torture - her training as a child soldier. She kept trying to insist to herself over and over again that she was used to it, but she wasn’t. 

This was worse.  
Junko was the queen of making things worse.  
  
“Pay attention! You’re just like the people who can spend all day distracting themselves with stories so they don’t have to feel anything real I’m jealous of them, you know? I’m jealous of those humans who are nothing more than toys that I can pop the head and limbs off of. They get to distract themselves. They can shut off their brains. I can’t."

“Junko-chan.”  
  
“You see my problem. I’m just way wicked smart. I’ve got to fill up my brain with something. If only I could really go crazy. I wish I had some excuse like lol that’s just Junko. She’s cray-cray. She’s nuts. But no, I’m perfectly sane and aware of exactly what I’m doing to you.”  
  
“J-j-Junko-chan.”  
  
Whipped again and again while an instructor screamed in her face for her secrets. Starved for days on end, and kept in a concrete room with only a bucket for a bathroom. A gag stuck in her mouth, her head dipped into the water over and over again. As a child soldier, she was trained to resist torture. She could endure anything as long as it was for her sister, she became strong for her sake, but what if Junko was the one doing this to her?  
  
“Don't cry. You can cry later about your big mean sister who thinks you’re stupid, and hates you and wants to kill you.”  
  
Mukuro is not here. Mukuro is not the one experiencing this pain. Mukuro is standing in the middle of a battlefield. She sees in the sand, and arid dry air that chokes her, she sees a single flower. 

She is sitting in a chair next to a boy at school. He looks up and smiles at her. She sees herself reflected in his eyes. Then she sees up from behind him, her sister appearing, reaching out her red hands, and strangling the boy to death in front of her.

She sees the first day of school. The entire class took a picture together. A boy stopped for a moment and asked Mukuro if she wanted to be in the picture too. It was the first time she felt together with everyone else. A boy showed her the smallest amount of kindness when she had been shown none. 

When she tried to avert her eyes, Junko slapped her clear across the face. When she tried to wrench herself away, Junko pulled her closer. Junko’s red nails were digging so deeply into her skin. She smiled because she knew the marks she left on her sister would never heal. “This isn't a painting. It's real. Do you know how I really feel? Maybe I just don't like you. I never wanted a sister. I hate you. How does that make you feel?" 

“D-did I do something wrong? I-I'm sorry. That's right. You didn't do anything wrong, Junko. You just want to feel despair, that's all. Right? Because you love me. That's why... That's why... You're just trying to feel despair right now, right? I'm sorry. I'm sorry I failed to bring you despair."   
  
“Oh my god. How do you not get it after all this time? God, do you ever think about my feelings? Way to make getting acid spilled on your hand, and writhing around from the burning flesh all about yourself! Ugh! You can cry later. You can die later."  
  
Mukuro saw the world as a painting.  
Enoshima Junko, her sister, was an artist.   
Mukuro held onto her sister's hand tighter because it was the only hand offered to her.   
  
“But, first you have to let go. Ugh, it’s so lame having to drag my little sister around everywhere. You’re like totally tacky. You’re cramping my style. You don’t match with my outfit at all. Just let go of me already.”  
  
“L-let go?”  
  
“You have to fall. You fall and then splat. Your head cracks open and the brains fall out like red spaghetti. No more thinking, no more dreaming. They mop you up and you become a stain. All of us stains, all of us equal before god. It doesn’t matter how different we are then, when we’re dead, we’ll just be corpses, totally twinsies. We can finally be together, but first, you’ve got to fall.”  
  
Hooks drove under her flesh and pulling her skin off. The synapses burning. The sinews slowly tearing apart, the fibers of the tissue split off and separate. Her skin was going to melt off like wax, wax dripping from the bone. The bones did not carbonize until a temperature of 500 degrees celsius or above. She was going to have to live on from now on without any skin. The ash would get in her skinless wounds and she’d get infected all over her body. Strings stretched all the way to their breaking point, and as they snapped they gave one last scream of agony.  
  
“I don’t… I don’t want to die!”  
  
“Wow, I think you’ve just experienced the first original thought in your life. Congrats. What are you going to do?”  
  
“I… I’ll kill.”  
  
“Even if you have to kill your classmates? That dumb boy you have a crush on?”  
  
“I’ll kill them.”  
  
“Even if you have to kill me?”  
  
Mukuro nodded.  
  
She would kill.

She would dismember and expose.  
She would kill them, slice them to bits, line them all up, trim them down to size, and then set them out for the world to see. If she had to dance on her sister’s strings, then she’d dance violently, and once those strings broke she’d be free.  
  
 _I should do something to stop this_ , Toko thought. She should cross the door, and touch her on the shoulder and say something. She could bash her head against the wall, and bounce her brains off of her skull until Jack woke up. 

But she stayed still, ear pressed against the door. She should go because it happened to her, and nobody knew as well as Toko did, how painful the word family was. But her feet were in her shoes and her shoes were not moving on the other side of the door.  
  
In the name of all the lunches, Mukuro cooked for her. The way Mukuro always let Toko run her mouth without losing patience for getting angry. She tried to wrench free of the ice that froze her feet to the floor. She had cried so much alone, and now she was all wet and soaked completely through and her body was too heavy to move. All she could do was shiver, and feel cold.  
  
She opened the door just a crack on the other side and saw Mukuro. The ugly, unwanted older sister, and the wanted, beloved younger sister, painted together in one scene. 

Eerily, she thought the scene was beautiful.  
Frighteningly, she thought the scene was a masterpiece.  
  
The back of her hand was swollen and red, and the tattoo of Fenrir the wolf had completely vanished under the scorch mark in the exact shape of Junko’s bloody red lips. There were tear marks. Someone was crying. Junko cried and stroked her sister’s hair.

“Muku-chan, I know what you need. You need a makeover! I’m a shallow, and vapid, modern teenage girl and I think a makeover is a solution to all of life’s problems. Maybe…” Junko’s eyes weren’t there. She was probably never there. Mukuro’s younger sister was a ghost. Something worse than a corpse. Disqualified. No longer human. “Maybe if I made you exactly like me, then you’d understand. Then you’d understand how I feel about you.” 

Junko’s out of focus eyes came into focus through the cracks in the doorway, as she noticed Toko. Toko ran away and left Mukuro there in that room. She tried to shut out the sound of Mukuro’s screams. She could only imagine what was happening in that room. Her fingernails ripped off and replaced with red acrylic fake ones, her face cut off, and another face placed on over the hole where her face was originally meant to be like a mask. Mukuro’s freckles, her distinguishing characteristics painted over with heavy caked-on makeup. Her hair ripped out of her scalp, and then covered up with a blonde wig.  
  
Toko put her hands over her ears and wished like a child that all the bad things would simply go away on their own. Toko ran away and stumbled into another room in the biology building to hide. It was a room with papers all over the floor and several folders that were crammed full of even more papers. T hey were student files. They must have been stolen. Toko saw her own name and immediately picked up that one. One sentence immediately drew her attention. _Fukawa Toko the Ultimate Literary Prodigy has been invited to the academy in an attempt to study her split personality, the Ultimate Murderous Fiend. A valuable subject. She should be allowed to roam freely, all evidence of her crimes will be covered up at the duration of her attendance at this school for the sake of the development of her strange talent._ A note written in pink pen, the entire file was covered in body glitter. Ick, this stuff was never going to get off. The note read: (Wow this place is even more fucked in the head then I am. Lol!) _  
__  
_My sister is a serial killer, Mukuro had confessed to her.  
 _I don’t even know what your sister is._

That question rang through Toko’s head again: What is family?  
She remembered more of her conversation with Mukuro in the early morning. Mukuro pulled at her chest like she wanted to pull it open and expose the inside (a y-front incision like the kind you would autopsy a corpse with), and then tear out the strings. She said. “Family is someone you’re so close to, you can’t pull yourself apart.” She said. All tangled up in strings. She said.  
  
“When I was younger I only ever talked to my sister. I was selectively mute.” Toko asked her why she went mute. “Nobody else wanted to talk to me.” Oh, it was the same for me. Toko was quiet now. Toko felt there were no more words to say, or write down. The entire lexicon of human language had completely failed her. 

  
**NOIRE**

“J-Junko!”

When Makoto came to pick Mukuro up her sister opened the door instead. A hand with painted red nails reached forward and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him. Makoto’s eyes slowly trailed up. He saw her legs, the way her skirt hugged her hips, her uniform jacket with the buttons undone, her bra showing, her lips, her pale eyes glaring right at him. 

_Eh? Why is she looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face? Oh, it’s my whole face that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s just blah._

He never felt so scrutinized before. Makoto’s instinct was to shrink away. He tried to, but their eyes met. Makoto never understood why in countless stories, they always made such a big deal of looking into someone else’s eyes, until this moment. _She has grey eyes._ Makoto repeated to himself as if he had just learned the most wonderful information in the world.

“Listen, I just wanna make this clear right upfront. Don’t get the wrong idea about any of this, okay? It’s not like I like you or anything? How come when guys always hear that they assume the girl’s always secretly into them? Isn’t that just not knowing how to take no for an answer?”  
  
This is the part where the story changes.  
  
“Huh, what do you mean?”  
  
This is the part where Makoto changes.  
  
“We’re hanging out today, right? I don’t want people to see us together in public and get the wrong idea! I mean, this isn’t one of those movies where the loser gets the prom queen. Even if you got a makeover, you’d probably have to makeover your whole life. Just, throw yourself off a building and hope to be reborn as a total hottie in the next life already. Gosh.” 

“Uh-umm… but, I came here to see Muku-”  
  
She yanked his arms away from him. She hugged onto him possessively, like he was her thing like they were an item. She was close, closer than any girl had ever gotten before. “I mean, I hope you’re not expecting anything from me. I see how you’re always staring at me. Gotta keep my virtue safe, ya know?”  
  
“I wasn’t staring at you. I was staring at Mukuro. Wait, no shut up!” He felt like he was seeing this girl for the first time. There was no way he would have forgotten someone so beautiful. “I’m… not expecting anything like that.” 

“I figured you’re that kinda guy, right? Looking at you, I get a total ‘Omega Male’ vibe. But still, they say even the tamest guy can turn into a wild animal. So I figured I’d say it anyway. Don’t ask me why, but I seem to attract guys like that. They call me super late at night all like ‘Hey, let’s hang!’ like I don’t know what that means.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“You poor sweet, innocent boy. Anyway, that’s why I need you to come out to Shibuya with me. You’ll be like… my nerd repellent.” Her chest was pressing against him. Her body curved against his, and occasionally he remembered that he was a normal boy and from time to time he noticed how to curve and supple the bodies of members of the opposite sex were. Even when he just tried to remain friends the thoughts were there. He was suddenly so hot, and so bothered. It bothered him the way this girl thought she could walk right in, and dance all over his heart?  
  
“So liiiiiiiiiiiiiiike.”  
  
“So, liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike...What?” Makoto echoed, completely clueless. 

“So like, when are you gonna ask me out?” 

He had just come to walk Mukuro back to school. He leaned in the doorway to see if he could catch sight of her. He shouldn’t let this strange girl boss him around, but he realized he didn’t really want to say no to her. 

“Or am I not your type. So what is your type then? You’re super passive, right? So you need an aggressive girl! Someone who will hunt you down? I’m an indecisive and trashy-trash girl. I could totally change my entire personality to match your tastes.”  
  
She smiled at him and flashed her teeth.  
Sharp.  
Lips pressed to his collarbone.  
Sharp teeth sinking into the skin of his neck.  
Then she leaned all the way and pressed her lips against his ear, and sucked on the lobe just a little bit and whispered. “What do I have to do to make you want me?”

“W-will you go out with me?” Makoto asked.  
  
“Nah,” She recoiled in disgust.

Rejection.  
Bitter.  
He tasted bitter between his lips. He suddenly pictured his lips chewing, breaking, melting, and him tasting sweetness, her sweetness…  
  
“I had to basically bully you into asking me out. Makoto… doesn’t want me. Not the way I want him.”  
  
It was such an open and honest question statement.  
It didn’t fit the fake, cheap, plastic, pink girl in front of him.  
She gave up and started to walk away. 

Makoto leg’s moved for him. His arms reached out and wrapped around the girl’s stomach from behind. It was pushy, and it was rude, and it was the exact opposite of his entire personality.  
  
“Will you go out with me?” He said, hugging onto her from behind. Arms crossed around her neck, he breathed shallow breaths into the back of her neck. 

“I already said.” 

“I’m still just a damn kid, I know. I know that I’m totally immature. I try to understand the people around me, but I’m always a step behind, but I…” _Man, I’m so lame. How embarrassing._ “I want to go out with you. So just. Say yes or no.” 

He was so embarrassed. She was going to laugh at him for sure. Young and hopelessly stupid. He never felt more excited in his life. He had spent his entire life being a shy guy, just for once he wanted to be a little bit shameless.  
  
She stepped out of his hold.  
Then turned back, just enough to give some hint of her face. He could see her faintly smiling.  
That’s right.  
He liked smiles.  
He liked her smile.  
He liked her - everything about her, especially the freckles that turned even redder when she blushed.  
  
“Lucky you. You just hit the jackpot.” 

  
  
**NOIRE**

He waited for that girl in front of the Hachiko statue.  
  
Just one date - the magic would end at midnight. He had never been on a date with a girl. If she asked him to dance, he didn’t know how to take the lead, he would probably just step on her feet by accident.  
  
He was too afraid to take her hand, so she took him, and dragged him along. She ran around Shibuya from one end to the other, like there was a bomb in her chest that would explode if she ever sat still.  
Running in heels.  
Trying on cute outfits.  
Joking around.  
Laughing so hard her drink came out of her nose.  
Pulling on him to get his attention.  
Getting jealous when he looked at other girls.   
Demanding his jacket when she was cold.  
Resting her head on his shoulder when she was tired.  
Screaming her lungs out at the horror movie.  
Stepping on his toes like she wanted to break them.  
Going wild.  
Almost crazily.  
Almost like she was broken.  
Almost like she had somehow faded.  
Like she was forcing it. 

She was just doing what normal girls did on dates, that’s what Makoto thought, and yet it was like she was trying to cram everything a normal girl did in a lifetime into one night.  
  
She expressed herself so openly, she laughed at him, lost her temper, she started a fight for no reason, she felt bad and apologized to him with watery eyes, only to smile with her whole face when he told her it was okay.  
  
Toko.  
Who just happened to be there watching it all.  
Tried to think of a word for two people so fundamentally incompatible.   
She knew what Makoto didn't - that this girl was just trying to spend one last day with the boy who couldn't save her. She was acting as if the world was going to end tomorrow. 

They stopped at a victorian style cafe at the end of it all. Tokos watched - across the street. Makoto chatted with her, about things like ‘herbivore men and carnivore women’, her time living on the streets, about past dreams and futures. Makoto was the type always worried about what everyone thought, but he seemed to forget the whole world when he looked at her.  
  
“Thank you for today, Makoto. If I ever decide to kill someone, I’ll make sure it isn’t you.” 

Junko expressed a terrifying sentiment, with a sweet, girlish smile on her face.  
Makoto pulled at the longest forelock of his bangs. He scratched at his cheek and looked to the side. She waved her right hand in his face.

“Guten, Morgen. Don’t tell me you’re getting bored of me. Listen, I get bored with other people but they don’t get bored with me.”  
  
“This might sound a little weird… well, it really is a weird question but…”  
  
“What is it? Oh. I get it. You hate me. You never want to see me again. You want to kiss me so badly.”  
  


Her eyes closed.  
A first kiss.  
First love. It was magic that only worked once. She propped herself up on her elbows and leaned against the table. If he kissed her, it would be the worst thing he ever did. But, he wanted to do it anyway. Cinderella's magic was so strong. He just had to go step on her glass slipper, and ruin the night, and make it awkward. Makoto got his fingers all tangled up in her hair and then threw the blonde wig off her head.  
  
“Why did you dress up as your sister and go on a date with me?”

“Y-you knew…”  
  
“Your fr-freckles are really cute.” So cute, he wanted to kiss every single one of them on her face to count them. “You don’t need to cover them up with makeup.” 

Toko found the word to describe them. Omniferous. A herbivore and a carnivore.  
  
Mukuro fell backwards. The chair tipped and fell with her.  
When Makoto hurried to her side of the table, to offer her a hand up she slapped that hand away violently.  
That terrifying hand.  
Her own left hand was bandaged up, and covered in a leather glove.  
  
Mukuro tried to walk over the table and pick up her water. Her hands were shaking so terribly. She was going to drop the glass again. She was going to drop the glass and make Junko mad at her. She picked it up and then.

 _I want to see the real you one day._  
  
She splashed the water in Makoto’s face and ran away. 

**NOIRE**

If he let her go now-  
If he didn’t chase after her.  
The eyes of everybody else at the cafe stared at him, and he self consciously sat back down. 

Makoto put both hands in his hair and messed up his sandy brown hair even worse. He closed his eyes and saw a girl with freckled pale skin, that glowed in his imagination like moonlight. No, the truth was he was always running away from her. “Ugghghg why am I so bad at things? I would give anything to be a confident and capable human being for just one second of my life.”  
  
“Yo, yo, yo. It’s a funky brother.” 

An old woman was watching him, preening herself like a bird. She noticed the empty seat at his table he was staring at and invited herself to sit. The first thing she did was grab the plate and start eating the food right off of it.

“Oh, y-you’re Takatsuki Sen, aren’t you? I can’t believe I get to talk to a famous author. I mean, what are the odds?” 

Toko crushed the plastic cup she was drinking her iced tea out of in jealousy and spilled it all over.  
  
“This is my hotspot. I’m always coming here when I’m in town.” Her eyes gleamed when she noticed him reach up to scratch at his cheek. “Are you having some trouble?”  
  
“I… I don’t know.”  
  
“Do you scratch your face like this a lot?” She mirrored the gesture. It looked a bit comical, like a child imitating an adult. “I don’t think you lie, but when you scratch like this you’re hiding something behind a smile, aren’t you?”  
  
“H-how did you know?”  
  
“I was watching earlier before that girl ran off!” She suddenly threw herself around, getting all overdramatic. “Waaaah! You’re a playboy, aren’t you? I bet you break all the girl’s hearts! Maybe I should be careful. You’re not into older women, are you?”

“P-please don’t tease me like that.”  
  
“Sorry about that. I’m a cruel woman.” She had stolen his drink now and was sipping from it rather loudly. She folded her knees underneath her, then sat on them so she could sit up in her chair and rest her elbows on the table. “I can listen to your troubles. Unless you think I’d be useless.”  
  
“Useless…?” Makoto shook his head. He put his hands on his knees and hung his shoulders in shame. “I think Ikusaba-san is in trouble. So I want to help her, but - I can’t do anything for her.”  
  
“You really like her, don’t you?”  
  
“I… It’s not like that.” 

“Oh, so you don’t like her?  
  
“W-what?”  
  
Takatsuki’s words were exact and precise. They were like instruments of torture. She pried it all out of you. “What do you think liking someone is? I’ll just say it. For me, it’s: to be with them. It’s easy to say you like them.”  
  
 _I want to see her again._ Why.. Why couldn’t he vocalize those simple words?  
  
“If you spend all of your time avoiding her, then maybe the truth is you just don’t like her that much.” Takatsuki tapped her big round glasses in impatience, and then took them off. “I don’t think you can do anything for her.”  
  
“I still want to help her.”

“You’re really lucky. For a boy like you to turn out this warm and gentle it must be because you’ve been loved and protected all your life. You were so lucky to have a family that did that for you, that you don’t even consider what it’s like to not have a family.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“You can’t understand her.”  
  
“I can’t…?”  
  
“I bet a lot of people have called you kind before this. It turns out though, you’re not kind, you’re just normal. You live the same way everybody else does by looking away from other people’s ugliness.”  
  
She reached up and touched both of his cheeks with her hands. She cradled him like he was something precious: a child. “There’s a side of her you don’t want to confront. I’m sorry if that hurts to hear. I just don’t think it’s nice to beat around the bush with kind words. What I hate the most are people who try to paint over the reality in front of them with pretty words as I love you.”  
  
Toko choked on her drink and spit it out.  
  
Makoto was so close, that he noticed something. “Is… is your right eye fake?”  
  
“Yes! Yes!” She suddenly grew bubbly and excited. “Do you want to touch it?”  
  
“No, not really.”  
  
“Here let me show you-” Takatsuki Sen reached into her eye socket, and with a thumb pushed the eye until it was all the way out. When it fell she caught it with her other hand. “Look, look, see! Isn’t it neat?”  
  
“Um…” Makoto felt uncomfortable again. “Please put it back.”  
  
Takatsuki Sen dropped her eyeball in his soup.  
  
“I guess I’m not going to eat that now,” Makoto said.  
  
Makoto took a deep breath, Takatsuki had stolen all his away. “Umm… Why are you helping me?”  
  
“I’m always looking for new writing material. Using real people is the best inspiration. It's fun to just sit and watch like a story unfolding before your eyes. Isn’t that right, Chan-Toko!?” Takatsuki called out, waving at Toko from afar. Toko immediately felt embarrassed.  
  
“Well, bye-bye now! I gotta go annoy my little bro some more. He’s not a funky-oniichan though, he’s more like smooth jazz brother, heyyyyyy.” 

She excused herself and left her card behind.  
 _TAKATSUKI SEN._ _  
__BIOGRAPHER FOR TOGAMI BYAKUYA._

While Makoto was staring into space, Toko pulled out a chair and invited him to sit at his table as well. “I keep telling everyone that Takatsuki sucks. Newsflash, your favorite author is a terrible person.”  
  
Toko waved her hand in front of Makoto’s face. She was supposed to be the miserable one, and he was supposed to be the cheerful one. The whole world was suddenly backward. “Hey! Don’t ignore me! You’re bullying me, aren’t you? Once my entire class pretended I didn’t exist for an entire year. I think there’s a horror novel with the same premise.”  
  
“Are you going to yell at me too?” Makoto like a child retreated into himself. He leaned all the way forward and hid his eyes behind his hands. “I don’t get what I did wrong.”

Toko opened her mouth to say something and decided to be more careful with her words because she didn’t want to just point out people’s flaws like Takatsuki. “Were you close with Maizono-san in middle school?”  
  
“We used to be close, but then… I kind of felt something was off about her. I didn’t really know how to help her, so I backed off. Even though I promised myself I’d never do that again, I’ve been running away from Ikusaba-san this entire time.” 

Ah. Takatsuki, just told people how to feel. Like they were characters in one of her books. Toko, bit her lip hard. “You’re an idiot. You should know by now Ikusaba killed a whole bunch of people and she probably loves-”  
  
“Shut up. Just, don’t say anything. This isn’t about you. She has to be the one telling me all these things, not you. I just… I just want to talk to her again.”

“I h-hate to interrupt your happy go dippy world b-but, you can’t be everyone’s friend much longer. In fact, I’m pretty sure everyone will hate you if you run off to help Ikusaba-” 

“Do you ever shut up? Have you ever, for a single second in your life, shut up?” Makoto wrung his hands and pushed to the edge finally pushed back. “I want to talk to Mukuro again. I want to kiss her, where she’s bleeding. Maybe someone will die. Maybe I'll die. No, I’m not thinking about the consequences of my actions. I have so many feelings that I can’t even think, but she's all I think about... somehow.”

“It’s easy to just say that.” Toko reached forward, and even though she had no idea how to comfort she tried to in her own clumsy way. Then her hand recoiled and she gave up. “Naegi, How… how are we supposed to help people when all we have is pretty words?” _  
_  
Toko stared at her hands. It was like a red string was tied to each of her fingers. All the red strings were connected in such intricate, crisscrossing ways and all of the strings were so tangled up in knots that would never unravel. It was all so elaborate and complicated no single person could know how they all connected. How many people asked the strings for love only to get strangled by them instead?

 _Don’t you feel like severing everything?_  
  
The things that hurt and held her back - family, friends, love. If Mukuro could let go of her sister, she’d be happy. Would it be Toko’s turn soon? To cut off all her fingers. She had been holding onto love’s poor grip for so long she couldn’t help but think true happiness is found alone.  
  
She had always been alone before this.  
Alone, before she met Togami. Alone, before the first time, Jack killed someone. Alone, locked away in a closet. This was all just a story she was telling herself.  
  
It’s so easy to be alone. As she thought of this suddenly her phone rang. The voice on the other end spoke. “I’ve kidnapped Togami. Meet me at the old school building if you want him back.”  
  
If she just let go, she’d be alone again.  
  
“Who are you?”  
  
“Maizono Sayaka.” 


	7. Blank Pages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really like the scene in DR3 where Munakata beats up Makoto, and Makoto kind of just takes it.  
> Finally, we're finished.  
> I hope you all had fun.

Whispering in Mother’s voice.  
“Automatic failure at happiness, shapeless spawn”  
My dear lost one, your parents failed in raising you. 

-From Takatsuki Sen’s “The Black Goat’s Egg’. 

**BLANCHE**

This isn’t my story but it was told to me.  
My other self is lazy. She’s always pushing all the work onto me. Let’s fill in the blank pages. With what else? A story.  
  
Mukuro is written with the kanji for ‘corpse’. They looked at her like she was already dead. Mukuro’s parents, her teachers, the boys and girls around the same age as her, all of them unanimously decided to treat her more like a dog than a girl. She started to believe them when they called her a heartless child.   
  
“I know she’s my daughter but I can’t stand that look in her eyes.” Her mother would say. And slowly it morphed into. “That bitch.”  
  
The environment changed around her a lot. Her parents were always moving them around. She had been homeless several times, but Mukuro never changed. Whether she was sleeping on the cold ground or beaten by her commanding officer until she could no longer stand, not a single trace of genuine emotion ever crossed her face. She didn't mind getting hit around by her sister, because it never hurt too badly. She simply stared into the void with milky-white eyes like those of a corpse three days after the death occurred.  
  
She didn’t have a heart, she had two hands one to hold onto a knife and the other to hold onto her sister. Mukuro you’re such a stupid crybaby, her sister would say. Mukuro, you’re crying too. Junko the trouble maker, Junko always running away from home, Mukuro followed her sister without ever complaining because she was afraid that Junko might run away from her, too.  
  
It was during those dangerous times that the world really was Mukuro’s enemy. Junko acted like she was trying to get killed, and as a result several times there were grown adults who tried to kill her. Men whose faces she didn’t even remember.  
  
Silently, heartlessly, she would rip apart any adult who would try to touch her sister. She would never scream, or cry, or growl or drool, and she didn’t even react to the sight of blood. A pale imitation of a little girl. Enoshima Junko’s shadow.  
  
People who met both of them had a hard time believing they were sisters. They wouldn’t understand until Mukuro had already chewed on their throats and spat them out. Her sister felt despair at the people she killed, and Mukuro felt no despair. She didn’t enjoy or feel saddened by it. Perhaps because she felt neither sadness, nor happiness, and certainly didn’t feel hope. Blood did not even look particularly red to her. When it spilled on the snow it didn't shine brightly with contrast as it did for her sister.  
  
Mukuro, standing in the snow and not feeling cold.  
Mukuro, standing in the rain and not getting wet.  
She told me all of this to clarify a misunderstanding, she didn’t believe the common stereotype of ‘twins who have opposite personalities’. She was very much like her sister. The same way her sister couldn’t feel hope and therefore fell into despair, Mukuro had no heart and nothing in common with a living person and therefore she killed.  
  
That’s her story, at least. 

Mukuro was still a baby brat. She might seem cold-blooded, but she was more human and her heart more brittle than anyone else. She was afraid if someone touched her heart it might break. 

  
  
**BLANCHE**

  
I went to Kuwata Leon’s room to kill him and he wasn’t there. If he was there I would have killed him, but he wasn’t. He was saved by his own good luck. Though, I guess he died five minutes later anyway so boohoo.  
  
The inside of the room was surprisingly tidy. Leon was the farthest thing from a neat freak, so it was quite a change. The trash was gathered up in one spot, and the old magazines were neatly wrapped together with string. A single kitchen, a shower, and a toilet. A CD-radio cassette player, a tower of CDs, with lots of Sayaka’s albums towards the top, a small desk with stationary and a lamp on it. All of the books had been organized. It was the room of an average high schoolboy. He had tidied up as if cutting all loose ends before he just went and died like that.  
  
Which is why I made it a mess again. I tore it up just a little bit. I ate a piece of paper I found with Leon’s handwriting on it. Then, I found all of the photographs and posters that Leon had torn down the last time that Toko was in his room. They were all pictures and posters of Sayaka. Maybe, he just lost interest in her before moving onto Toko. He was a wannabe playboy, after all, any girl would have been fine for him. 

When I turned to open the door I saw his belt hanging from his doorknob. He wore two leather belts that were studded with fake rhinestones like he was some kind of JRPG protagonist. That was a weird place to put it. Oh well. Then I got bored and went to go stalk Togami. Death is a tragedy for most people, but for me, the greatest tragedy of all is living. I hope to kill people. Just kidding, I’m not that messed up. Toko was taking a nap though and I don’t have much to do in my free time because she won’t let me buy any video games. She’s like a nagging mother.

Then, yadda yadda, I saw the body in Togami’s building. Togami hit me in the head. It was sexy. When I was making the snow all pretty with Toko’s blood, I saw this. Mukuro stopped in the middle of her run because she saw Togami walking away from the house. He was fiddling with his cufflinks, a nervous habit of his, but only making them more dirty because his fingers were covered in Toko’s blood.  
  
“Togami,” Mukuro said, in a flat voice. “If you got in a fight with Fukawa, you should apologize.”  
  
“I have nothing to do with her.” Mukuro was callous, but Togami was downright cruel. He said these things intentionally to hurt people. “Just like you have nothing to do with that sister of yours.”  
  
“If you have a problem then just tell me. I’m not Junko, I don’t really like games.”  
  
“Here’s what I really think then. You can’t make any decisions for yourself, so you’ve attached yourself to Enoshima. She’s just your excuse, and anybody would be fine right? You can ditch her and move onto Naegi-kun, and you won’t lose anything.”  
  
“She’s my sister.” 

“Just because you have a blood relation to someone doesn’t make you family.”  
  
“Your Makoto’s friend so I don’t want to…”  
  
“See, my point exactly. Let’s say Makoto were to save you from your wicked evil sister. Nothing would change. You’d just be taking orders from a different person.”  
  
“Makoto wouldn’t use me…”  
  
“He doesn’t need to use you. You let others use you. You know the truth don’t you, that you’re from separate worlds. You’re either born loved or you aren’t. You can't ever fix the circumstances of your birth, even if a normal boy is willing to love you because he pities you” He put his hand on his cufflinks and pulled on them. “You’re given that love at birth you can’t earn it. You should know that you spent seventeen years trying to earn your sister’s love and she never once appreciated it. You can earn money, you can earn a victory, but you can’t earn love."

Mukuro lowered her eyes. She always felt so unstable, as if the fragile world would break underneath her feet. Junko was always trying to break, but Mukuro held onto it for dear life. 

“The only person you should have ever killed was that sister of yours.” Togami’s face seemed to disappear behind the glare of reflecting off his glasses. “For a stupid reason like wanting to protect your sister you became a murderer. But now that sister is useless and so are you. You killed all those people for no reason. If that’s the case… then, why not take orders from me? Let me purchase you, Ikusaba? If you’re not strong enough to make decisions on your own then be dominated by someone strong like me-”  
  
“You’re not strong.” 

Mukuro grabbed Togami and flipped him over in the snow. In an instant, the whole world order was turned upside down on his head. Togami looked comedic. He looked foolish. Mukuro smiled. 

“That time with your mother. That time with your siblings. You just watched it. When I was ten I killed a man to protect my sister? I bet you could have done it too if you were stronger. That's your philosophy isn't it?"  
  
“How do you know that-”  
  
“My sister knows everything. It could have been anybody. All your siblings killed each other, so whoever was left standing at the end was declared king. If it could have been anybody then what did you win? What did you earn? It seems to me like, you’re just a warm butt to put in the throne. A nameless king. You cling to Togami, even though you hate that name because otherwise, you wouldn’t have one.” 

Mukuro climbed onto him and put her hands around his throat. It was cold. It was methodical. It was completely passionless.

“You lost your mother. You lost your siblings. What did you win? The right to be a breeding stud. Did you want that? Did you work hard for that? Whatever." 

She wrapped her hands around his throat for one simple reason, so she could stare into his eyes and illustrate exactly how powerless he was. When he lost consciousness and she let go. Her fingers cold, her hands empty.  
  
“I don’t get it, Junko. Sorry. I don’t get it. It’s my fault for being stupid - but what’s so great about despair anyway?” 

She kidnapped Togami. Moved Kuwata Leon’s body to the exact same spot she had moved Maizono Sayaka’s, and then she woke me up. 

  
  
**BLANCHE  
**  


Her story wasn’t as simple as saying her sister didn’t love her back.  
  
A memory. In her memory there were flowers. There probably weren’t flowers in reality, but Mukuro’s memories of her sister were always so beautiful, they had all the color, and scents, and softness that reality lacked for her. 

There were no flowers, but there was a corpse at her feet. It was a corpse that bled fresh blood into the snow. Mukuro had just beaten a man to death for touching her sister the wrong way. A knife cut a hole from his throat all the way down to his collarbone, but the collarbone was too difficult to cut through, and out of the hole spilled flowers (no it was not flowers, it was blood, thick, pungent, wet, the scent of blood smelled nothing like flowers). 

The body was a little bit too damaged because Mukuro didn’t know when to stop. She hadn’t yet learned at what precise time a body died, so she had killed him over and over. She only stopped because her sister wrapped her hands around her trembling hands. 

Her sister was crying. Crying, wailing, howling. She made all the noises that Mukuro couldn’t. She cried so hard Mukuro was afraid she might never stop. Mukuro picked Junko up, even though Junko fought her, and slapped her in the face with her small palms a couple of times. She carried her sister on her back through the snow.  
  
Stomp. Stomp. Carrying the weight of her sister their footprints sank deeper into the snow. Mukuro walked until they were standing in front of their home again. She dropped Junko on the ground.  
  
“Ewe. I hate this place. Why did you bring me here?”  
  
Junko complained.  
  
Mukuro turned around. “Don’t run away anymore, Junko-chan.”  
  
“Wh-why?”  
  
“I’m the problem child in that household.” Mukuro was ten years old, about. She was smart enough at that time to know what others thought of her. “And… you don’t need me.” 

“Are you mad? Because I’ve stolen all your presents every year at Christmas? Because I killed your pet rabbit. Because I cried until mom made you share your favorite stuffed rabbit with me? Because I put poison in your juice box when we were five? I’m sorry so forgive me.”  
  
“Bye.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re ugly. It just sucks! I hate being bored all the time. I’m sorry for always causing you trouble! I’m sorry for starting fights and then hiding behind you. You’re annoyed with me now, aren’t you? You think I’m annoying and you don’t want to be sisters anymore!?” 

Junko took a running start, her bare are feet stomping through the snow, and jumped on her back. She wrapped both of her arms around Mukuro in a death grip chokehold and refused to let go. Mukuro had always been much stronger than her sister but she couldn’t shake her off. “I won’t let go! I won’t ever let go! We’re gonna be together, forever! I don’t have stupid parents! I don’t have any stupid friends! No matter how many times I’ll always be your little sister! Even if we’re born to separate mothers, I’ll track you down, and kill whoever else tries to call you family. Hate me! Despair at me! Try to kill me! But don’t leave me alone!” 

“Sis, you’re a complete psycho. So why do you always cry so much?”  
  
“Because you’re crying too.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Mukuro touched her face. Nothing, then her sister from behind put her hands on Mukuro’s face. Her sister ran her hands down, and thumb the corners of her eyes slightly. It was before she had started wearing those awful, tacky, plastic fake nails all the time. 

“I’m sorry. I can’t talk about boys with you, or plan slumber parties, or pick out cute clothes. I can’t play with you, or laugh at you, or do anything that normal sisters do. It’s just when you make that stupid Mukuro face when you’re about to cry but don’t, it makes me sad too. Don’t cry alone anymore, because we’re Despair Sisters. We always cry together.”  
  
“I killed someone.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’m ugly.”  
  
“Psssst, here’s my secret. I’m ugly too. I just hide it behind makeup. Sadly there's no amount of makeup in the world that could fix you, stupid-head."   
  
Her sister hugged her from behind.  
“Thank you for protecting me, all this time, Muku-chan.” 

If only her sister hated her.  
If only her sister despised her.  
Her sister was always full of dirty language, her sister was greedy, and shiftless and made bad choices and always got her into trouble, but.  
As long as you had one memory of being loved, it was hard to start hating a person. No matter who that person becomes, even if her sister was eventually replaced by Enoshima Junko-chan.  
  
The snow that day. Her crying sister. The cold that froze her tears, and later her heart. When her sister, she felt like she had become normal for once. Her sister gave her a heart. It only lasted a brief moment before she cooled off again but.  
  
It felt good to be praised.  
That was the first time in her life anybody had ever praised her or thanked her.  
But then, Junko lost her mind.  
And with it, she lost Mukuro’s heart.

“Junko-chan, is never going to praise me again, huh?” Mukuro said, in a voice lacking any emotion at all.   
  
  
  
  


**BLANCHE**

She finished telling me the story and asked me what I think.  
  
“I think you should kill her!”  
  
“That’s what you always say.”  
  
This time, just like promised we talked about our motives for killing people. “Why’d you go on a killing spree this time?” 

“I didn’t. What do I look like to you? Some kind of murdering slut? I’ll tell you the same thing I told you back then, those guys weren’t my type. I guess you did show me yours, so I gotta show you mine now. Damn, this is my first time doing this with another girl."   
  
“Then Jack, why do you kill people?” 

I’m not the author but if I had to describe Mukuro she looked like a dog left to die. Yet, some part of her was still convinced her owner would come back for her. The world had so obviously been harsh to her, but still, there was something innocent still in her eyes. That’s the thing about dogs no matter how much you beat them they’ll still look at you with love. As guilty as she was, she was also innocent, and that was why she was able to ask me a question like that.  
  
A laughable question.  
Seriously, I just had to laugh. 

Toko can’t laugh so I have to. 

“Because I’m a monster without a heart.”  
I laughed, and spit up in her face.  
She didn’t even blink.  
  
“Because I’m a psychotic bitch. Because it’s fun. I do it for no good reason because there’s no good reason for killing people, you know!” 

“Really?”  
  
She was talking to me in the hospital bed after she had carried Toko all the way there. She made us switch places, and asked me a few questions to clarify. 

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you.” I suddenly stopped laughing. Just didn’t find it funny anymore. “I feel guilty just like anybody else. It’s just, that person is more important than my feelings. I’d do anything for ‘er. I’d kill everyone else, and then myself if she asked me too.”  
  
But, I’m no good for her, really.  
All I do is coddle her. I think my problem is for a serial killer I’m far too nice.  
  
“Togami?”  
  
“Nah.”  
  
Mukuro nodded as if she understood. My gut. A sudden rabbit punch to my gut, cutting off whatever I was thinking at that moment. I was going. Gone now. Th-the-th-that’s all folks.  
  
“Fine, I’ll do what you asked me to.” I said. “Hey, you’re always looking out for that crazy sister of yours. Do you think you could look out for one more? That girl’s got no one to look out for her. That’s me. I’m no one. Just a figment of her imagination-” 

**ROGUE**

Here’s the rest of the story. 

A stray cat and a rabid dog meet each other in an alleyway and then tear each other’s throats out.  
  


**ROGUE  
  
**

The roof of the old school building. They moved through hallways with lockers left open spilling contents that students left behind, over a black and white tile floor with several tiles missing. Broken windows, with shattered glass that had rained down on the floodways at one point. The entire building had fallen into disrepair. Toko and Makoto were greeted by a voice when they reached a rooftop. She had been sitting on the edge, looking like she half wanted to fling herself off, stood up, and faced them. 

“Oh, em gee. I had to wait like, forever for you two! Don’t you know not to keep a lady waiting? You’re totally disrespecting on the classic protagonist slash antagonist relationship here!”  
  
A girl stepped out of one of the lockers, tapping her foot as if she had been waiting for them. She was wearing black combat boots, long camo pants, a flack jacket, a white lab coat, and a luchador mask over her face. Toko felt embarrassed just looking at her, she kind of wanted to leave the roof just from her secondhand embarrassment.  
  
“U-umm…” Makoto stammered. “I don’t really know what’s going on but I’m here to help.”  
  
“I’m not a protagonist. I’m not even that nice of a girl.” Toko grabbed Makoto by his stupid hoodie, and then jerked him back. She placed the bladed end of her scissors at his neck. “S-spoiler warning but, it’’s s-so obviously you, Ikusaba. So l-let’s trade hostages.”  
  
“W-wait! How is this helping?”   
  
“Th-this is all you’re good for so shut up already Naegi.”  
  
“Well now you’re just hurting my body, and my feelings,” Makoto whined.  
  
“So you’re not going to play the detective, huh?” The girl slowly raised her hand and pointed a finger forward. “Then in the place of the great detective, I’ll say it. I’ll totally say the line. All lines are written, and directed by the great superstar (that’s me) after all. I’m a triple threat. Actually, I’ll kill you, so that makes me a quadruple threat. Okay, okay, I’m saying it. ‘The culprit is…’ Bum Bum Bum Bum…” 

  
She made a noise like a drum solo from her tongue to build anticipation, as she pointed at her own forward. Then she raised her thumb as if it were the trigger, her hand became an imaginary gun, and she pulled the invisible trigger.

“Me!”

In one smooth motion, she ripped her mask off. Ikusaba Mukuro was underneath the mask, doing a terrible impersonation of her sister. It was like she was making fun of her ridiculous sister behind her back.  
  
Her hair, a black bob like a drowned raven’s feathers, had been diced up into something hideous. She had cut all of it off. She loathed all of it. She loathed herself. Cut, cut, cut, until all that remained was a thin and patchy crew cut. 

“No duh. I just said it was you.” Toko grumbled. 

“Mukuro… what did you do?”  
  
Mukuro limbs moved as if they were connected by ball and socket joints. “Here’s a multiple-choice question for all the viewers at home! A: I killed Maizono Sayaka. B: I killed Maizono Sayaka. And C: I killed Maizono Sayaka. Makoto’s really dumb so I had to make the multiple-choice, super, super, easy!”  
  
“...Why?”  
  
“What does it matter why? God, if you want to sit there pondering why, why don’t you just go write a damn book already? Everybody at this damn school has a why! We all have tragic backstories, I’m like sooooo over it. Enoshima Junko-chan doesn’t care about despair anymore, hope is where it’s at!” Mukuro lurched forward, the strings continuing to command her. Faster than Toko could react, she knocked Makoto free from Toko’s hold. She picked her up and choke slammed her against the wall. 

“Mukuro…” Makoto said, sitting up from the ground. Makoto grabbed her shirt from behind to beg her to stop before she went any further with Toko. “We’re friends aren’t we?”  
  
Mukuro’s fingers in her free hand flexed, and then curled into a fist. “Makoto, I’m not a normal girl… and I’m not nice.” She finally said, in her real voice. The confession she had been waiting so long to make in front of him. She had to tell him her true feelings. She had to tell him how truly awful she was. She hoped those feelings would fill him with disgust. 

“She was never your friend, she’s just a terrorist..” Toko grabbed the bundled up papers from inside her uniform and spilled them on the floor. They were papers of compiled information on every single one of her classmates. “You and Enoshima-san infiltrated this school to kill your classmates. Everything went well, and then your sister lost her mind.”  
  
“It’s not fair. Junko-chan is always running off without me, and always leaving me behind.” Mukuro’s fingers tightened. As if desperately trying to keep hold of something. A red string, even if it was around her neck. “But, even though we’re sisters and we’re connected by blood… All of that doesn’t mean anything to her. After all, all that girl looks for is despair, other people’s despair, her own despair, it’s all that exists for her…”

All of a sudden it looked like Ikusaba’s eyes were gazing far away.  
No man was an island.  
But Enoshima was. All alone, and adrift in a sea of blue.  
A singular existence.

She didn’t need a sister she just needed despair.

“I thought if I could follow the plan she left behind, Junko would feel despair again. Then she’d finally come out of her room. That’s why I started the mutual killing again. I sent out all the blackmail we had collected, and started threatening people until somebody broke.”  
  
“You killed Kuwata, too?”  
  
“I guess.”  
  
“The victims of Genocide Jack? They had to die for your sister?”  
  
“Yep, them too. They had to die because Junko said so. I’d kill everyone in the world, and then myself if she wanted it…” Mukuro got excited and panted like a dog. She dragged her fingers down her face, which had turned so red like her heels were bleeding. She made the same lovestruck expression that Toko always made when she looked at Togami. “Do you hate me now? Oh, you hate me! You totally hate me! Well, whether you love me or hate me it’s totally the same to me, either way, I feel despair.”  
  
Makoto did not say anything, but he did not look away either. 

“Hey, Hey, Hey! Why don’t the boys go play together while we have some girl time? Togami is somewhere inside the school.” Mukuro picked Toko up. “Let’s have some girl talk, Fukawa!” 

Mukuro looked like she wanted nothing more than to hold Makoto.  
Makoto held his arms out open to Mukuro.  
As if wanting to embrace her.  
As if waiting for her to come home.  
She grabbed him by the neck instead.  
She lifted him like he was nothing.  
Then, Naegi fell.  
Began falling down the stairs.  
  


**NOIRE**

  
  


“Who gives a crap about the backstory of some shitty dog?”  
  
“Not you, I guess.”  
  
Toko got to her feet.  
She didn’t sympathize.  
Lacking in everything a normal person she had she didn’t have a drop of empathy inside of her. She couldn’t possibly feel the pain of other people. 

“You d-don’t want your sister to get better at all, do you? You want to break her legs and chain her to the bed, so she can never l-leave you. F-filthy, sick, dog. S-sister complex. Incestuous bitch." 

Toko knew better than anyone else because she had lived in that household.  
The moment a person’s switch had been flipped.  
  
That last part had been the trigger. Something Mukuro would never do to her sister. She just wanted a normal sister, a normal life.

Mukuro grabbed Toko by the braid and yanked her head down. The next moment a knee slammed straight into her stomach. She felt like her organs had just been bruised. Queasy, queasy. Toko had emetophobia. She was afraid of puking. When she puked, she would become so disgusted with the idea of puking that she’d puke again. The taste of blood in her mouth. Don't faint. Don't faint. You have woken up to a thousand bloody corpses. Death is your old friend. You are not afraid of blood. Love is far, far more painful than this.   
  
“You’re not socially impaired. You’re just downright cruel.”   
  
Again.   
Again. Bashing the side of her head. It was like she was a defective product.   
A television that could only be fixed by hitting it.   
  
“Meaaaaan, Toko-chan’s a big bully. She’s just like all the mean girls who bullied her, except she’s usually too much of a spineless wimp to do anything but bitch and moan.” 

Mukuro made to grab her by the face, and Toko bit down on her fingers as hard as she could with her pointed teeth. It made a bloody mess.  
Toko tried to picture it as flowers, but when she ate the flowers and swallowed them down it didn't taste like flowers or anything sweet.   
  
“You can’t do a single thing without Jack. Bring her out, already.”  
  
“I d-don’t need to. There’s no way I’d lose to you. Y-you’re just a sick bitch, who gets off on being her sister’s punching bag.” 

“The sight of blood doesn’t make you want to faint? Then, what if I paint you with your own blood, and make you all pretty, like makeup!”  
  
Toko stumbled back her hands on her stomach. The legs that were supporting her collapsed. She felt like she was falling into something. Yes. To put it simply, she felt… sleepy. The princess couldn’t go to sleep.  
  
Everything everyone else said was right about her. Ugly, ill-tempered, rude, downright mean at times the only good thing about her was that she was so used to taking her beatings in that house that she could endure this pain right now. She was used to being life’s punching bag. 

She picked up the scissors from their holster around her leg and lunged at Mukuro’s neck at them. She held the scissors in both hands to swing down with twice the strength. Mukuro grabbed her by the face and stopped her like she was a little kid. She just knocked her down to the floor of the roof.  
  
Toko had no idea how Jack was always doing backflips in this body, she didn’t have any athleticism at all. 

Toko got up again, but this time before she could move her face was smashed and completely flattened by the back of Mukuro’s palm. People were always saying that she needed a nose job. She stumbled two steps back, and then swung her whole body around and tried to jab her scissors into the side of Mukuro’s neck. Mukuro flicked her skirt up (she was wearing black panties underneath this is an important detail) and drew out a long hunting knife with a serrated end and caught the scissors on her knife’s edge.  
  
Toko realized at that point that scissors were completely impractical to bring to a knife fight.  
  
She pulled out another pair of scissors she had been hiding in the long sleeve of her uniform and tried to stab for a surprise attack in the eyes only for Mukuro to stop her by holding up a hand and letting Toko stab straight through the center of her palm. 

It was at that moment she could tell Mukuro was not wearing her gloves. Her left side destroyed, her right side intact. The natural symmetry of her body ruined. Her left hand was covered in burns and the tattoo she was once proud of had been removed by her sister.  
  
Mukuro’s makeup was so smeared. It was like she was wearing a mask of her sister’s face over her own, and that face had half-melted off.  
Asymmetrical.   
Like her left and right half were disagreeing with each other.   
Like they were pulling away from each other.  
She was just trying to keep it together, Toko knew the feeling.   
  
Mukuro grew violent.   
A dance.  
Mukuro wrapped both of her arms around her and spun her close, only to spin her away again. The two of them could only be entangled for a moment only to separate. 

When Mukuro threw her away again, Toko tried to catch herself as she spun, spun, and spun again. She was getting nauseous again but bit her tongue, nausea, vertigo, the desire to leave this painful thing called a body. She had been living as Fukawa Toko for seventeen years, and therefore she had already faced pain much worse than this.  
  
Toko saw the world as a book, and she wanted to cut the pages out. Mukuro saw the world as painting and she wanted to tear up the canvas. Both girls wanted to be free, and so they were trying to kill each other. 

It was a knife fight, but Mukuro was fighting with a sort of elegance. That even Toko who detested murder, who hated blood, had to describe it as artful. It was more like a fencing match, with Mukuro carefully choosing all of her strikes and parries. Toko kept stepping back and kept losing more and more ground.  
  
“D-do you know what I really hate?”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“No, I just hate myself. But…” Toko wrapped her ankle around Mukuro’s and her arm around her back and then threw herself backward. They were at the edge of the roof now. “I think I’ve fallen for you.”  
  
They fell and crashed into the garden below. Toko saw the broken glass from the ceiling above shatter and then fall like snowflakes. Glittering, glittering, so pretty. She wanted to fill a glass jar with the prettiest dust, and then break it.  
  
A lover’s suicide. An end for both of them. Mukuro stood up like she didn’t feel anything. ll. Even if that dog was shot right between the eyes, she would probably keep biting, keep fighting, keep clawing, and not let go even after brain death.  
  
“Oh, come on? What are you made of steel?” 

  
  


**NOIRE**  
  


It neither hurt nor itched to tumble down the stairs. When Makoto hit the bottom, he just assumed he had taken a lucky fall, and not broken anything. He ran in the hallways (even though that was breaking the rules) until he found Togami.  
  
Togami stood with his back turned to Makoto in the garden. He was holding a hose and watering the flowers. They had stopped tending to the flowers a long time ago, and the room was completely overgrown with weeds and vines.  
  
The garden used to be populated with every flower imaginable but now all that was left was an overgrowth of white flowers that choked out all other plant life. There was the glass ceiling above and the stone pathway. Togami and flowers. When he noticed Makoto standing there, he took special care not to step on any of them. 

“Oh good. You’re here. Let’s go already, this is taking up far too much of my time as it is.” Togami said. He checked his watch. Then, started to walk away. Casually, ever so casually. Unattached. Unconnected. This had nothing to do with him.  
  
Just as he passed Makoto, the boy reached out and grabbed him.  
Hands.  
Dirty, filthy hands.  
Hands that grabbed him and pulled in every direction.  
Hands that refused to let go.  
Hands that left their marks all over his skin.  
Ruining him.  
The same way footprints ruin fresh snow.  
Trampled on, Stepped on, Touched, Used.  
  
His entire body became taught, he sucked his chest in breathing a, “What?”  
  
“I want to talk to you about something.”  
  
“Go ahead. Run your mouth like you always do.” 

“Well, Sayaka didn’t fall asleep even though she drank the wine probably because she was on sleeping medication right? You build up a tolerance to it if you drink it a lot. And, if you were on the same medication you probably wouldn’t have fallen asleep.”  
  
“What are you saying?”  
  
“You’re the only one among us who knew enough about Genocide Jack’s crimes to copy her signature method of killing. You knew things only the police knew. That part about _Bloodlust_ being written in their own blood was never published in the papers.”  
  
Makoto tugged Togami’s sleeve down. There were scars from where he had slit his wrists. “If you cut your own wrists, you’d get just enough blood to write that on the wall, and you could hide it afterward. That’s why you’re always fiddling with your cufflinks.”  
  
“An idiot like you really thinks he has me figured out?”  
  
“If an idiot like me can figure you out you’re not as complicated as you think you are,” Makoto said, wit a friendly smile on his face. “But like you said I’m just an idiot. That’s why I’m asking you to explain yourself, to me, and to Fukawa too. There’s no reason to fight, we can all talk to each other because we’re friends…”  
  
“You were never my friend.”  
  
Togami picked Makoto up by his hoodie and threw him. Makoto was beginning to believe two things: one that he was too short, and two he should not have worn this hoodie today. Togami stepped through the flowers again and slammed his foot straight into Makoto’s chest.  
  
“What do you want to talk about? Should I tell you I never received enough hugs as a child, and then as the kids say ‘Hug it out’ with you?”  
  
“That’d be pretty nice. Actually.” 

“You’re delusional just like Maman.” Togami picked him up by the front of his hoodie. He balled his fist up in Makoto’s shirt. He pulled the hoodie up and over Makoto’s head, off of him. Makoto’s clean, innocent, undirtied body. “You’ve never been in a fight before have, you?” 

“Nope. I’m kind of a wimp. Who could ever punch this face? It's just so lovable.”  
  
He wanted to bruise his unblemished skin. He wanted to break the heart that had never been broken. He wanted to destroy everything he’d ever had. “You know, when Mama hit me I should have hit back. That time with my siblings too, instead of watching I should have been a one to put an end to them. Now, I’m able to do so. I’ll put an end to all this trauma.”

He punched Makoto in the chin. Makoto’s head snapped back. When his head recoiled he bit his tongue by accident and started to bleed from his mouth, which made all the words coming out sound like mush. Togami touched Makoto’s lips and got blood on his fingers. He brought his fingers to his own lips and sucked them until they were clean.   
  
Makoto fell back again, and Togami didn’t stop. He really wanted to lay into him. Pounding on Makoto. He hammered, beautiful, mister angel face, innocent like a child Naegi Makoto with his knuckles until they quickly became raw. He hit over and over. Makoto’s teeth stuck through his lips, and Togami lacerated his knuckles, his fingers, several times on the sharp edges of Makoto’s teeth.  
  
He wanted to kill every last Togami alive and destroy their history. He wanted to burn down the mansion while he was still inside of it, and then get crushed by a wooden support beam that fell on his head.  
  
“Do you still want to talk?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You still haven’t learned your lesson.”  
  
“Didn’t you know? I don’t belong here? I only got here due to dumb luck. My stupidity is my only redeeming quality.” Makoto said, and then like he was bursting out of the grave his spine curled up and he slammed his head straight into Togami’s forehead.  
  
Togami’s glasses broke. He threw them away. He didn’t need them. Somehow, the world completely out of focus made more sense to him. Togami stumbled back just enough for Makoto to get on his feet.  
  
“Why don’t you tell me about your feelings?” Makoto said. He had obviously never thrown a punch in his life, so all he could do was swing recklessly.  
  
“Sure. Hold I’m. I’m just trying to think, which answer will you hate the most.” Togami easily ducked around Makoto’s swinging fist, and then slammed his knuckles right into Makoto’s face. Makoto’s nose was crushed, and twin streams of blood shot out.  
  
“I’m going to talk to you! If you were strong, you wouldn’t need to beat the shit out of the world’s biggest human doormat to prove it. If you hit me in the face, I just apologize for breaking your knuckles on my face.” 

Togami punched him across the face. The time he had thought of pushing Toko off the bridge. The many times he had thought of making Naegi wipe that stupid happy grin on his face. It was all coming back to him now, brief flashes of violence. He pretended to be a son of the Togami household when he was just a rude and ill tempered child. A cross blows from left to right, to give Naegi whiplash. The forehead. The nose. The lips. He wanted to destroy all of the faces.  
  
“Not gonna back off until you talk to me.”  
  
“Do you think I killed all your little friends? Is it because you feel guilty that you weren’t able to do anything for Ikusaba and Maizono?”  
  
Makoto laughed.  
  
“Why… why are you laughing?”  
  
“You don’t really understand people’s feelings at all, do you? Then, you’re just like me.” 

Makoto always pretending to understand but not really understanding what his friends went through. He saw himself in Makoto’s face, or rather the naive child he used to be. The one that had to be killed so he could become a Togami. The flowers in this garden were watered with the blood of children. Their ashes gave nutrients to the soil. He had buried his siblings that day under the grass, one by one, all by hand. The roots would eventually wrap around their bones. 

“Dirty. Dirty. Dirty…” Togami muttered to himself, and then kneed into the chin of the prone and pinned Makoto, hard enough to smash his teeth, and break his jaw. “I will make flowers bloom from the dirt.”  
  
The person he really hated was.  
The person he really wanted to hit was.  
  
“WHITE! FLOWERS! Though really, white flowers are ugly so I’ll paint them red.” Blood flew from Makoto’s body, into the flowerbed below. Even now Togami was tangled up in vines. The more he struggled, the tighter they wrapped around him. “We’re nothing alike! I am crazy! I am special! So red flowers suit me just fine!” 

Togami stood up then. He stretched. He felt refreshed. He ran his fingers around his collarbone, his breast bone, he felt the muscles that were just underneath the fabric of his suit. He didn’t even seem to notice the stains. Read on the green, like flowers, blooming all over him.  
  
“Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Irresponsible hypocrites like you are only good to be stepping stools for the elite. You filthy hypocrites just love to prattle on about how we all should get along!”  
  
Makoto looked at his hands. His were round and smooth. Togami’s were callous, the skin broken in several places. This was really stupid but he did want to apologize for messing up Togami’s hands so badly. His hands. His useless hands that couldn’t even take Mukuro’s hands.  
  
He was always afraid of being one step behind his friends.  
That they’d all realize he didn’t belong in that class.  
But the truth was he was running away from people.

Hypocritical altruist. Coward. Nice guy. 

Makoto’s left eye was swollen so badly that it was completely shut. He was bleeding from his forehead. Twin trails of blood came from his nose. He was bleeding from several cuts underneath his eye. He had holes in his mouth and the side of his face. When he moved he felt a sharp piercing in his chest and knew at least one of his ribs was broken. “This isn’t one-thousandth of the pain Mukuro has been through. So it doesn’t hurt at all.”  
  
“What are you a zombie?” 

Makoto staggered forward.  
He was all alone.  
He made friends easily but never kept them.  
When he transferred to a new school in his second year of high school.  
He felt anxious, afraid, and helpless.  
He didn’t know why anybody would pay attention to him. 

“Fukawa’s right. Maybe we can’t be friends after this. Maybe instead of helping everyone, I can only help one person.”  
  
There was someone who accepted him.  
Now that he thought about it they were terrible for each other.  
Not just because she was a murderer, and he was just an innocent victim.  
They were too alike.  
They were both shy, they were both passive.  
They were both the type to let everybody else make their decisions for them.  
They both thought that it was better to let themselves get hurt.  
Mukuro wanted to protect someone, and Makoto was the type to let himself be protected.  
They would probably ruin each other.  
A wolf and a sheep. The two most incompatible people on earth.  
  
“What’s that? Mukuro’s not a wolf. She’s cute as a little bunny.”  
  
But.  
That’s why he wanted to try even harder. He couldn’t stay a stupid naive brat forever. Grow up for the sake of one person.  
  
Togami began to look afraid. “If you take one more step, I’ll kill you.”  
  
“I told you this doesn’t hurt. What really hurts is being alone, and having nobody to talk to. I don’t care if I die, I don’t care if somebody dies, we’re finally going to talk this all out…” 

Togami swung his fist again as Makoto zombie walked towards him. This time he stopped just short of Makoto’s face. Togami could not make his body obey him. Makoto put both of his hands around Togami’s and gently guided it down. Then, he opened his mouth, and with several teeth missing gave Togami a bloody smile.  
  
“I don’t know what I’d say…” Togami said in a quiet voice that was not at all like him. “They’re all just empty words.”  
  
“People need those words! People need somebody to tell them it’s okay to live. If you had been told those words, you wouldn’t be throwing a giant temper tantrum right now!” 

It was Togami who fell to his knees while Makoto remained standing. The tower collapsed, like towers always do. “I… I’m a member of the elite. I worked hard. I studied every night. I didn’t play with friends. I did everything others asked of me. So why… why doesn’t anybody want me around?” 

“I do. Fukawa obviously does. I don’t think Ikusaba likes you but she doesn’t really like anyone. She’s weird. She’s cute. You can talk to me about anything.”  
Makoto just barely standing.  
Spineless jellyfish. Wiggle wiggle.  
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I… I was too scared to do anything other than what I was told. I can’t be anything other than what I was raised to be. So I didn’t try to subvert the order of things even though I knew it was wrong… Slowly, slowly, I started wanting to destroy everything to do with the name Togami, but I’m so weak I can’t even raise a hand against my father. That’s why I needed her.”  
  
Togami hung his head.  
  
“This time too. I knew exactly the whole time who the culprit was, but I lied about it to cover up my weakness. Your lot, you all got dragged into this mess because I lied about it. I was so scared of her, that covering up her crimes was all I could do.”  
  
“You suck, Togami-kun.”  
  
Makoto was still smiling.  
  
“You’re super high school level lame. You’re just a rich pretty boy with no friends. You’re a stuck up poser. You’re pretending to be something you’re not. Stuffed shirt. Lout. Jerk. Big mean jerk. But, I’m even lamer.”  
  
Makoto’s horribly irregular gate as he walked made it clear how painful it was just for him to move. Yet, he drew closer to Togami. He stood up in front of him, and embarrassedly scratched at the back of his head. He was blushing, brighter than the blood that covered his face.  
  
“I can’t even tell the girl I like how I feel about her.” Makoto shrugged. “And you know me. I’m just a pushover. You could probably kill me and I’d still want to be friends with you.”  
  
“W-why?”  
  
“You’re not the only one who wants to run away from everything.” 

Before they could finish their conversation, the ceiling collapsed on them.  
The sky fell down on them. 

  
**NOIRE**

  
This was a stupid plan from start to finish. When she read books she always assumed she was smarter than the characters. All Toko had left were her words. Just this once, she wasn’t going to tell some sickly sweet love story. 

Mukuro abandoned her knife and climbed on top of Toko. Her hands reached for the girl’s neck. She would stop breathing soon. She wouldn’t have any more words to say. 

“W-what I really hate is everyone telling me their stories. I wonder what went wrong? When did people stop being able to just do things without making up some b-bullshit stories! It’s always out of hope, or despair, or love, or something. I'm doing this for Togami. I kept deluding myself. Believing you can do something for others is a happy delusion. Once you realize it’s a delusion, there’s no place left to go. You don’t even feel despair, it’s just blank. The end of the story. Except there is no end it just cuts off. Togami didn’t give a damn about all the things I did for him, and Junko doesn’t care about what you do for her.”

It felt like everything she had said in her life had been a lie up until this point, because the truth came from her stomach.  
  
“You can’t use your s-sister as an excuse anymore. She can’t make your decisions for you. She’s not even here. S-so tells me what you really want.”  
  
“I want to kill you.” 

This was just like that time. When her head was shoved underwater. When she was strangled. When she was locked in a closet. Toko endured, gritting her teeth to do so. She loved bugs, she had to be like a cockroach that would keep living even if you cut its head from its neck. From a distance where Makoto and Togami were standing, they just looked like two children fighting. Toko slapped Mukuro as hard as she could, and at the moment that gave her rolled out from underneath her. 

“W-what I hate the most is myself. I think I’m crap. I’m a walking inferiority complex, I’m p-paranoid, d-delusional and there’s nothing on this earth that can make me happy. I d-don’t think I want to get better. I feel like I could get a lot worse. I should ruin my whole life by making every b-bad decision I possibly can, and then write a book about it, and go drown in a river. Y-you really want to kill me. Go ahead! I’ll help!” 

She put the blades of her scissor around her right index finger.  
  
“So, for example, you’re going to kill me like this?” She closed the scissors on the knuckle, cutting all the way through the bone and popping the finger off like it was a sausage.  
  
There was a sound like a string snapping.  
Toko had always longed for this.  
To be free of all the strings, that was human connection. An overwhelming maddening pain went through her, as she flashed the stub that remained of her index finger in Mukuro’s face.  
  
“Satisfied?”  
  
Mukuro flinched. 

“You’re not, are you? W-why would you be satisfied with that. That’s not nearly enough. You’d kill the entire world for your sister’s sake, right so there’s no way you’re satisfied yet.”  
  
Mukuro growled.  
And she trembled. It was the first time Toko had ever seen her shaking from emotion.  
She didn’t care about other people’s feelings.  
She was too busy with her own.  
  
“I guess the middle finger is next?” She said and then placed her middle finger between the blades of a scissor.  
  
She had been a broken doll for a long time.  
That’s why she had no nerves.  
That’s why she had no heart.  
She had put all of her feelings into her book, and nothing else remained inside her.  
That’s why she could destroy her own fingers.  
  
_Snip._  
  
“Ring finger, next?”  
  
_Snip._  
  
“And, finally the pinky?”  
  
_Snip._  
  
“Well, that’s my right hand destroyed. I won’t ever be able to write again. It’s t-too bad, writing was the only thing that was ever good about me. Now I’m just normal broken. I’m mediocre and crazy.”  
  
“Ah… Ah… Ah…” Mukuro was panting now, completely out of breath.  
  
“You’ll have to do the other hand for me, this hand is kind of useless now.”  
  
Mukuro rushed forward and grabbed Toko’s wrist. She wrenched it away from her. The knife and the scissors were both on the floor, and neither girl was holding onto either one of them. Toko shoved her hideously, gnarled up fingers in Mukuro’s face, like bloody sausages. Fresh blood, and raw meat, both things made Toko sick, but she was always sick.  
  
“I thought you didn’t care about your classmates. I thought you only cared about your sister.”

Mukuro crashed from her madness like coming down from a drug binge. She looked down and saw it was Toko, not Junko who was beating her up. There had been love, and there had been pain, and for Mukuro you couldn’t have one without the other. Perhaps, her voice was always so emotionless because she was holding back sadness.  
  
She crawled off of Toko.  
She limped away like a dog with a broken foot.  
She bowed her head to the ground and curled her spine.  
She made herself look as small as possible.  
  
“J-Junko… please stop…”  
  
Her hands pulled at her torn up hair. She based her head on the ground. Blood fell from her forehead, instead of tears because she had not cried since she was a little girl.  
  
“I don’t want to fight anymore.”  
  
Her fingers curled up on the ground. The dog begged. No, she wasn’t a dog anymore.  
  
“I wanted a normal sister and a normal life, but I couldn’t have those things so I just gave up on everything and did what my sister told me to do.” 

It was then they both saw Makoto and Togami. Makoto dragging his foot behind him tried to take another step forward. He tripped. Got up. Tripped again. He crawled this time and reached up to tug on Toko’s sleeve.  
  
“P-please, just don’t hurt her anymore.”  
  
“I killed them, Makoto.”  
Mukuro said, facing him for the first time.  
This was the real her he wanted to see so badly.  
“I just wanted it all to go away! I hated everything! I hated you!"  
  


  
**BLANCHE**

This is just another hopeful delusion. That memory in the snow was Mukuro’s only happy memory of her sister. Every time it snowed, her sister would run away from home and Mukuro left the house to go looking for her. She never played with kids her own age, otherwise. She was never unhappy though because Junko despite having everyone’s attention always made time for her.  
  
What if on one of those snowy days she had met a child other than Junko in the snow.  
A boy with sandy colored hair, in a jacket and hoodie. If only she had been so lucky as to meet him sooner.  
  
“Brrr… It’s so cold. Why did I go outside?”  
  
In her delusion, the world was all white. A boy purer than snow suddenly grabbed her by the hand. He rushed up to her out of nowhere and pulled his own gloves off so she could have his. Her frostbitten cheeks suddenly felt warm. She was close enough she could see small snowflakes in his eyelashes. 

They both stood there in the snow, only their frozen sighs between them. Dear and treasured memories, of a time that couldn’t exist, but could have been. If she had met him much earlier. She didn’t need her sister because a boy was standing beside her that smiled at her and that was enough.  
  
“Makoto…?” She knew him before he even gave her his name. “Makoto… where are we?” 

“Come on, let’s play!”  
  
She felt anxious like she had forgotten something important. Then a snowball hit her in the face. She stopped worrying. A snowball fight. Junko always put rocks in her snowballs so it wasn’t very fun. Junko… Junko wasn’t here right now. Mukuro realized that this boy wanted to play with her and not Junko. She suddenly ran forward and tackled him over in the snow. They both tumbled up and kicked up the white powdery snow like it was dust in the air.  
  
Makoto tried to wiggle free from her, but she was stronger. She pinned him down in a pose used by the French army until he begged for mercy. When she let him go, he rolled away from her and tried to escape again. She chased him around. Everything had been so cold a moment ago because she was alone. Now, she was warm all over.  
  
She kept chasing him around, and he kept running away from her. He hid behind a tree and threw a snowball that pelted her in the face again. She snuck around the tree and caught him by surprise, this time when they rolled in the snow together she let go and they both ended up laying down on their backs and facing the sky.  
  
“I’ve never had this much fun before. Mom and dad are always fussing over Junko-chan. They never pay attention to me, but now my life has finally gotten kind of fun.” 

One moment in time.  
Mukuro’s hallucination was like a dying dream now that everything was over. 

We stopped for shade, warm, unmoving sunlight peaked through leaves.  
And there, as you laughed, you said one day we’d stand in the same place.  
They were words I’ve yearned to hear for so long.  
Stay.

Junko won’t stay. No one will. The problem is me. I’m not good enough. 

Even so… would you stay, with me…?  
But now it is but the fleeting remains of the day. 

_I’ve become acquainted with a boy. I knew I’d like him ever since I first saw him. He talked to me without reservation or hesitation with a smile uncalculating or plotting. He’s perfect._  
  
She thought maybe, that boy might like her back.  
Even though nobody had liked her, her whole life, not even her sister. Not really.  
  
Makoto crawled across the floor to reach her. Toko simply stood there. The passive spectator. Mukuro had curled up on the floor. He placed a soft hand on her back. Mukuro was muttering, and covering her face with her hands to hide away, but she wasn’t crying. He didn’t know who she was muttering too, Junko, maybe. 

“Let's run away, Mukuro.”  
  
Mukuro’s eyes looked up with clarity when she heard her name. Makoto was a coward, so running away was the only thing he could think of.  
  
“Why… why are you trying so hard for me? Aren’t you sad? Aren’t you sad that Sayaka died?”  
  
“Of course I’m sad… but I...”  
  
Naegi Makoto.  
Might like me.  
He looked at her with blue eyes.  
Blue, clean, innocent pure.  
  
He threw his arms around her and hugged her. Oh. She had never wanted despair. All she had wanted was something so simple: for someone to hold her close like this and tell her it was okay.  
  
“I love you.” 

In Mukuro’s hand, there was a knife.  
  
“You can’t.”  
  
Then, it was in his chest. He saw his blood get on the knife making it dirty. Mukuro’s eyes were still staring into the frozen time but suddenly a crack appeared in the ice. Then it all poured out, blood poured out. He smelled so familiar. There’s no forgetting it. The smell of the person she loved. She was close enough to hear his heartbeat. The heartbeat of the person she loved. His heartbeat got faster, causing more and more blood to spill out.

The warmth of blood was immediate because her body was colder than any corpse. A dying heart pressed close to her chest.  
  
“Do you hate me?” Makoto asked her. “That’s okay, but, even if you’re the worst girl in the world I could never hate you.” He finally wrapped his arms around her all the way and cradled her head. “I’m sorry I left you alone all this time.” 

Snow fell from the broken ceiling above. Mukuro looked like she had been out in the cold a long time, her whole body shivered, black hair sticking to her cheeks and face, casting a dark shadow over her eyes. She thought she had gone numb a long time ago but then she felt it.  
  
It began first with the red of Makoto’s blood. Slowly, and steadily, color returned to her world. The first thing she heard was the beating of her own heart, and it occurred to Mukuro with a steady, mounting certainty that she would not die. She was more than undead. She was alive. Her eyes filled with the colors, and the dimensions of the world.  
  
First came the color, and then the pain. Red. Searing. Burning. Flesh-ripping. Flesh-eating bacteria. Chewing on her skin. Thousands, and thousands of little teeth. Pain. Her sister had hurt her a lot. She had been hurt so much by the person she loved.  
  
She realized a moment too late, she had done the same to Makoto now too.  
  
Mukuro climbed on top of him. She straddled him. The corpse of her lover. He looked up at her and saw the darkness of the old school building and her against that darkness. Her grey eyes like heavy clouds waiting for the rain to fall. 

“Ma… ko… to?”  
  
Makoto opened his mouth to explain why, but blood was all that came out. His last string had been severed. He fell forward and held onto her, and holding onto her, he was dying. A stuffed animal. The stuffing ripped out. His last few moments, he used to comfort her. He held onto her like a teddy bear.  
  
“Makoto, you idiot.”

 _You idiot.  
Dying so worthlessly like this… is just like you.  
You idiot. You idiot. You idiot.  
You annoying idiot.  
_  
Always inserting yourself into things. Always acting important when you’re not. Always acting like you understand when you don’t.  
  
“Makoto…’ She said shaking him, trying to rouse him from his sleep. Even though she had seen countless corpses before and knew what death looked like. Even though she had killed Maizono Sayak and felt nothing about it. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, Makoto.”  
  
_But I am glad. You were there for me, ready to pull me back when I strayed, always ready to accept me. At those times, though I never said it was the happiest times of my life._

  
You walked with me, you grasped my bloody hands and showed me the way home. They were times covered in a hazy dream, now fleeting and soon to vanish.  
  
_I was…  
_ _I was really happy I met you._  
  
Then came the rain. There was no rain, only one girl’s tears. She clutched Makoto’s body and cried. Ikusaba Mukuro cried. Dogs don’t cry. They only cry to clean their eyes. She had become a human being with feelings of her own. She had found the heart she had lost so long ago. He had given it back to her.  
  
She found love.  
But there was also pain.  
  
Mukuro Ikusaba screamed. Every time her sister beat her she had been completely silent, simply taking it. She howled at the sky, her voice splitting, breaking, cracking from the effort. She started to cry.

Endless tears.  
For the people, she had killed. A long list of them, starting from the first person she had killed to protect Junko, and ending with Naegi Makoto. The girl who could be called a heartless dog, a girl with no feelings, had endured more pain in her first seventeen years of life than most did in a lifetime.

She screamed until her voice ran out. She coughed. She spat up blood. Then, she collapsed forward. She broke down, crying, and begged in a quiet voice over and over again for Makoto to come back to life. To smile at her once more. To laugh like nothing was wrong.

She didn’t need her sister anymore.  
I never even wanted a knife.  
I just wanted your hand to hold.

But by the time she had realized it, his fingers went completely cold.  
He couldn’t hold anything, anymore. 

Nothing and no one would ever make her feel this way again, and so she cried.  
  
Mukuro’s small world.  
A snow globe with nobody inside.  
She was staring into it, dreaming. 

The cold room. The lights above. Every little thing.  
Reminded her she was alone. Alone inside of a snowglobe. Her fragile heart, couldn’t accept the weight or depth of his feelings. Her fragile world didn’t have enough room for him.  
She thought this was it.  
It was finally time for her to shatter.  
Then, suddenly Makoto's body moved.   
He reached up with his hand and took hers. She felt a faint pulse inside of it. He squeezed her hand with the last of his strength. 

"Your new haircut looks nice."

He was an idiot, through and through. 

**BLANCHE**

  
  
A delusion inside of a snow globe.  
This time Makoto looked up at the girl who had pushed him over into the snow. This time he was the one who was dreaming. 

“How come you’re crying?” 

He asked her.  
Tears fell.  
On his face.  
As she sat on top of his, her face almost eclipsing his.  
  
“I’ve never seen you cry before.”  
  
Makoto said.  
  
“We don’t play in the snow if you don’t want to. I just… I just wanted to play with you…a little bit longer” Makoto looked around. He looked all over. In the field of white, Mukuro had disappeared. His new friend had vanished. He was a little bit sad, and a little worried about her.  
  
He wandered around in the big, empty white field for the longest time, until he forgot who he was looking for.  
  
“I guess she went home.”  
  
“Big brotherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”  
  
A voice called out to him.  
Makoto turned around.  
He had to go home but... what about that girl?   
He started to wander into the world of white looking for her.

They had for a brief moment in time shared the same dream. A world where they got to meet each other much sooner, but like all dreams it ended. All love is just a dream. A dying dream at that. No matter who falls in love it will always, always be temporary. Yet, we catch a beautiful look in someone's eye and keep running after it, over and over.   
  
“Sorry Komaru, I might be a little late coming home..."   
  
  


**NOIRE**

“Big brother!” 

Komaru clung to her brother on the hospital bed. She cried into his chest and shook him to try to rouse him from his sleep. The hospital attendants warned her to be careful and even had to start holding her back. 

Komaru had kicked them out of Makoto’s hospital room half an hour ago. Even though they had not told the doctor exactly what happened, them showing up with her bloody and beaten brother already looking suspicious. Toko had to practically gag Mukuro with her one remaining good hand, to stop her from incriminating herself.  
  
Several stitches on his eye, his forehead, the side of his mouth, his jaw broken several ribs broken, several teeth would have to be replaced with fakes, and a severe stab wound with internal bleeding. _Maybe someone will die. Maybe I’ll die._ That was the price for such reckless words.  
  
Mukuro had started crying and never stopped since then. She was hugging her knees like a ghost of a small child in the corner of the waiting room. This was a private hospital of which Togami was a major investor so he cleared it out from them. 

Toko flexed her fingers, inspecting the red stitches at her knuckles where they had been reconnected. They moved too sluggishly for her liking. She probably would not be able to hold a pen properly anymore, wait, was she right-handed or left-handed? 

Next to her was Takatsuki Sen. She was holding coffee in her hands, but she had added so many marshmallows it was now more marshmallow than liquid. Toko took her coffee black. “You’re really going to let Meowkuro-Nyan believe she was responsible for everything? Your soul is black just like your coffee.”  
  
“The mystery ends when someone comes up with a solution that sounds plausible. Nobody s-said that solution had to be true.”  
  
“That’s true, that’s true. Still, for somebody who only cares about Togami-kyun you really got invested this time around. Isn’t that right, miss-unreliable narrator?”  
  
“I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Well, since I’m the better author.” Oh, so she was just saying that now. She put her cup down on the table and leaned on the arm next to Toko taking up more of Toko’s personal space. “I might as well explain my story. You can be the dumbass who asks me questions since you’re so clueless after all. Or at least you pretend to be.”  
  
“Who killed Sayaka, if not Mukuro?”  
  
“Mukuro never said she killed Maizono. She said she was responsible. She was the one who sent the blackmail out who started the situation. Togami-kyun received threats about his family and Maizono’s career was threatened.”  
  
“W-wait, how come I didn’t get blackmailed?”  
  
“You never even check your mail.”  
  
“Th-that’s because people would only write to me to send hate mail!” 

Takatsuki really was treating this just like it was a story for her to figure out. She picked up a pen from the pocket of her oversized coat and then started to chew on it to think. “The key evidence is Mukuro didn’t know how everybody had gotten knocked out that night until she investigated it herself. Which meant she wasn’t in on it. Her plan was sloppy at best, a desperate bid for her sister’s attention. She’s not a mastermind she was just pretending to be one.”  
  
Toko crossed her arms, knowing Takatsuki would just continue to prattle on. Toko had always hated the sound of her own voice, insecure, stuttering, like a broken harp string. Takatsuki loved hers. “Then why would Jack - “  
  
“That’s easy, Jack lied. You lie all the time. You’re lying right now by pretending to be clueless.”  
  
“You can’t just tell people what they’re thinking-”  
  
“Then, people should be less obvious about what they’re really thinking instead of having it all over their faces.” Takatsuki smiled cheerfully as ever and clapped her two hands together. “She didn’t even try that hard to kill you. She’s a soldier, and you’re an English major, you literally didn’t stand a chance against her. The reason you’re alive is that she promised Jack she wouldn’t harm you-”  
  
“Then, what did she want-”  
  
“She wanted you to kill her. Pretend to be the mastermind, and die taking all the blame with her. It was just a plain old regular suicide attempt, it wasn’t even that much of a mystery. Gosh.”  
  
“Th-then who…”  
  
“It’s who you suspected, to begin with. Kuwata Leon killed her.”  
  
“But he was the second victim-” 

“Of who? Genocide Jack? They both died of strangulation not stab wounds. Kuwata Leon is the killer in both cases but let’s work backward. You already found the murder weapon in his dorm, or Jack did. It was his belt, he looped it around the doorknob and then suffocated himself to death by slowly inching forward on the floor. You don’t need to use a noose and hang yourself, there is plenty of fun and creative ways to die.”  
  
“Why would he-”  
  
“If he is the murderer then it makes sense. You know, Chan-Toko most people who aren’t serial killers feel bad when they kill people.” Takatsuki lectured her by sticking a fat finger in her face. It was like being talked down to by a teacher, but Toko had only ever had one good teacher that she listened to in her life. “Sayaka was killed by strangulation, deep purple finger marks on her neck. If she was the one who was planning to kill someone that night, how did she die? That’s easy, the person she was trying to kill woke up and fought back. Strangulation is an easy way to accidentally kill someone, most people don’t know how much the human body can take.”  
  
“It’s incredibly suspicious that you know all this-”  
  
“I have to research these things for my writing! Honest!” She looked so incredibly smug about her lie too. Takatsuki kicked her little feet that didn’t quite reach the floor. “He killed her and pretended to go to sleep. That’s when Togami-kyun woke up early and decided to frame Genocide Jack for the murder.”  
  
“W-why? Genocide Jack never hurt anybody. Except for all the people she killed.”  
  
“He didn’t know who the real killer was. He acknowledged the possibility that there could be a seventh person present that night.”  
  
“W-who would that be?”  
  
“Me, of course. I’m the Genocide Jack imitator.”  
  
“Y-you’ve killed people.”  
  
“Oh, shush. Like you care.”  
  
“W-well, I don’t want to get framed for murder at least.”  
  
“What about all those actual murders you committed? Were you planning to confess to those?” That shut Toko up for a good minute. Takatsuki was really the opposite of her, friendly, confident, completely self-assured in all of her actions. She popped a marshmallow in her mouth and ate it. “The reason Togami-kyun’s been sleepless, wandering around town, and the reason he sits and waits at that cafe every day is that he’s been plotting with me and meeting in secret. I was the one stalking him.”  
  
“An affair!”  
  
“Ewe! Icky! Chan-Toko is so gross! He’s my jazzy little brother. Smooth jazz. Hey brother, yaaaa!” 

That was too much information for Toko to handle at once.  
Takatsuki politely handed her a business card.  
  
SHINOBU ~~TOGAMI~~  
PERSONAL SECRETARY TO BYAKUYA. 

“You're not the only one with two names. Byakuya-yaku-kyun is like a cute little brother. I’ve been getting rid of rivals and preparing the way for him to be king for a long time now. He wouldn't kill me when I gave him the chance to so now he's stuck with me. He thought I was the one who killed Maizono, so he covered up the murder. When he investigated he deduced Kuwata was most likely his killer, went to his room that night to confront him but then…”  
  
“Kuwata-kun was dead.”  
  
“So he set it up as another Jack killing so his story would be consistent. Oh, and he slit his wrists both times to write on the walls with blood. He probably took his jacket off and put it back on. See, see, there was no mastermind! Just a bunch of misunderstandings and murder.” Taktasuki suddenly hugged onto Toko’s arm. It felt like bugs crawling up her skin. The bad kind of bugs. The ones that bite. “Teenagers are so scaaaaaaary! There’s nothing more frightening than a girl in love.” 

“W-what do I have to do with any of this? I’m just as confused as everyone else is.”  
  
“Why else would you tell such a confusing story, unless you were trying to hide something?” Takatsuki leaned all the way forward and then poked Toko right on the nose. She really was so affectionate. Disgusting. “You’ve woken up to Jack’s killings a thousand times. You knew immediately that Jack didn’t kill Maizono, which means the only person that could have set up the crime scene to look that way was the boy in the room who admitted to knowing things only the police knew.”  
  
Hugging.  
Takatsuki Sen was hugging her now.  
Toko wished she really had let Mukuro kill her, just so she could avoid this awkward situation.  
  
“You really like Togami-kyun a lot, don’t you? Even though you were the one he was framing, you threw yourself in the middle of things and made it as messy as possible to cover up for him. You two should get married, then we’ll be sisters in law! We just have so much in common after all!”  
  
“I w-want out of this story! Life is such a shitty story! Who the hell is writing this crap!”

Everything she said was correct after all.  
She cruelly antagonized two people, told Leon to die, told Mukuro to suffer, and yet completely overlooked a mass murderer. She didn’t know for sure if Togami was covering up the killing spree, or if he was the killer himself but either way was fine with her.  
  
Telling Mukuro off for rejecting everyone else and only caring about her sister, and saying she did everything for her while doing the exact same thing for Togami. All of the best authors really were hypocrites.  
  
Hers was an all-embracing love.  
Unwavering, undiluted affection.  
If she was killed by Togami she would forgive him even then.  
She would love him all the same.  
That kind of love could crush a person.  
That wide-open devotion was simply too much for one person to handle. Togami would never live up to all the love she held in her heart for him. She loved him as a replacement for everybody else. It’s not that she couldn’t love, she just couldn’t receive affection from others.  
  
No matter how many times Mukuro showed her sympathy, all she could respond with was disdain. No matter how friendly she tried to be, all she could see was herself in the mirror.  
  
Why didn’t she interfere when she saw Junko doing all those terrible things?  
It’s probably because nobody had saved her. 

Keep your head down. Pretend to know nothing. That’s how you survive in an abusive house.  
Did people have fatal flaws written into them like they were characters in a book? She didn’t know, but she was certainly more imperfect than most people. That was her ugliness. A girl nobody could love, because she probably didn’t deserve it in all honesty.  
  
“Not everybody hates ugliness. That’s just you, Chan-Toko. It’s like your disease.” 

“Mm, but… I’d like to like all the ugly things about myself one day.” 

She could still hear the quiet sounds of Ikusaba Mukuro crying. Still staring at the strings that were holding her together, idly the girl wondered if she would ever get to cry like a normal girl. 

**NOIRE.**

Togami took his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers. He looked at the delicate stitching. The two of them were alone in a hospital room, in a bed covered in white sheets. “Fukawa there’s something I have to tell you-”  
  
“If it’s a marriage proposal then I accept.”  
  
“I have to tell you about-’  
  
“Ah, that, I already know all of that.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“I know everything about you. B-because I’m always thinking about you. I’m your stalker after all.”  
  
“That line was almost good.” 

Toko felt a little bit greedy. She leaned her body against his shoulder at first, and then sinking, slowly sinking, she slid her head right into his lap. She buried herself in him, wishing the world would disappear and got rather frustrated when it didn’t. 

Mukuro Ikusaba had cried.  
She found her heart again.  
When would it be her turn? 

  
If she didn’t have a heart the least she could do was press her head against her chest and listen to Byakuya’s like this. Such a kind boy, such a gentle boy, couldn’t be kind or gentle so the least she could do was love him. She fell in love with someone who had all the qualities she did not have.  
  
“Mffffmfmffff.”  
  
Those azure eyes looked at her the same way they did the first time she confessed.  
That day.  
She remembered feeling so strongly.  
She had to hurry up and.  
  
“Mmmfmfmfmfmf.”  
  
“Just say what you want to say already.”  
“Byakuya-sama.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
Say it.  
“I love you.”  
Empty words, without substance, that anybody at all could utter, a vocabulary lacking mass. She saw a lonely child and wanted to tell him she loved him. She thought he deserved to hear somebody say it. Surely, out there, no matter who you are someone will love you.  
That’s all there was to it.  
Ultimately that was all.  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
Flat out rejected.  
He raised an eyebrow. 

“Why exactly do you love me?”  
  
He asked the same question he had back then.  
Ever the curious child.  
  
“If you ever start to love me back, then I’ll tell you.”  
  
She raised her hand and playfully pressed a finger to his lips. It was the closest thing to a kiss she could give him now.  
  
“Then I guess I’m never going to know.”  
  
Togami touched a hand to her face and it felt warm. She opened one eye and saw he was slowly wrapping a red scarf around her.   
  
“You went into the river to get my scarf back!”  
  
“It was my scarf. You stole it from my room.” Togami said, and then wrapped it all the way around her head so many times her face was no longer showing. “There, it looks better that way.”  
  
“Mmmfff.”  
  
Toko couldn’t talk.  
There was a scarf blocking her mouth.  
  
“Speak up already.”  
  
“Mmmmfmfmfmfmfmff.”  
  
“I said speak up. You’re the only one I talk to, Toko. Hold your head with a little bit of pride, you have the honor of talking to the heir of the Togamis.”  
  
“A story…”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Tell me a love story, please. Mom never once read me a story, so when I was about to go to sleep I always had to make up my own. I think I’ve found the start of all of my delusions.” She said, as she rested her head in his lap once more and continued clinging to her. He just allowed it, neither pushing her away nor inviting her closer. It was like loving a statue as always.  
  
Pygmalion.  
What a stupid story. She wanted to love the real boy underneath the marble.  
She wanted to kiss his cool lips.  
She wanted the stone skin to crack and break off and reveal him naked underneath.  
But, he wasn’t ready for that just yet.

“You’re the author, not me. Don’t be lazy.”

“I want to be spoiled for once in my life.”

“You’re already spoiled, you smell like a rotten egg, and your brain’s gone bad. I want nothing to do with your fantasies. I already told you I hate love stories-”

“But I love them.” 

In a twisted way, the feeling was mutual between them. Toko looked into his eyes for the first time. Her eyes were like the weak flame of a candle about to be blown out by the wind, and for the first time, Togami did not feel the need to break something weaker than himself. He felt a shudder through his entire body, his bones rattled like he was shivering from the cold. 

“Fine, but not Cinderella, not Snow White either, you and I would never appear in any of those stories.”

Stories about strong, and good people getting their happy endings did not fit the two of them.

So, he just rattled off what little he knew.  
  
The tale of a murderer who was killed by her big sister every night, and the idiot with bad luck who fell in love with the girl who wants to kill him.

A tale of a boy who didn’t know how to love.

A tale of a girl who didn’t know what love was.

How they foolishly thought they still could love someone else. 

The people he talked about in his stories all seemed like strangers who had nothing in common. Not one of them read like an actual human being. There was only one thing that kept them all together.

Their characters may have gone off the right path, they may have made mistakes, and they may have dropped out of society, but even they can live properly.

No, maybe not properly. But they were living lives that were reasonably fun and interesting, better than any kind of story written down in a novel. They lived. They were alive. Togami confirmed that, as she felt the heartbeat of her body pressed against his.

“Why do you hate love stories so much?”

“I just don’t think you’re that good of a writer.”

“That’s a lie. I’m a total disaster of a human being, but I’m the best damn author in the whole world. W-what happens next?”  
  
“I don’t know. The rest of the pages are blank.”  
The story he needed to tell.  
The story she needed to hear.  
Only consisted of one word. One word that could neatly tie together all of the tangled threads.  
Live. 

**NOIRE.**

This is the story of a girl whose whole world consisted of one person.  
This is the story of the most average boy in the world.  
  
The next morning when Komaru went to check on Makoto’s hospital room it was empty. Toko once again pretended not to know anything. She kept her head down and thought it was about time she bought a new pair of shoes throughout all of Komaru’s questions. 

She just wanted to sit in her hospital room and read. It was difficult, turning the page with her fingers that were now floppy from the nerve damage. Just when she dropped the book she heard someone else stepping into her room.  
  
Togami picked it up and handed it to her. Not only had he given her a scarf, but also a pillow he stitched himself that said ‘Ambition is the willingness to kill and eat the people you love’. She wondered if these awkward gifts were his attempt at an apology, but he didn’t have to apologize. She had already forgiven him for this and everything else. 

This awkward side of him was new. He was not quite the person she thought he was, but she was sure she’d fall in love with that Togami too. He picked up the book and handed it to her. Togami was seldom the one to start a conversation. She had to badger him. If she wanted to hear his true feelings about something, she had to poke and prod him until he flustered.

He watched her with careful eyes, keeping up with her reading. Then when she needed him too, he would reach around her shoulder and turn the pages for her. She took advantage of this and scooted closer to him than she really needed to be. He begrudgingly accepted it. When she got a good way into her book, it was Togami who spoke up.  
  
“Are you… Am I…”  
  
Stiff and awkward.  
He really didn’t know how to be himself around others.  
He didn’t know who he really was.  
Well, she would love him all the same no matter who his ‘real self’ turned out to be.  
  
“Are you really okay with leaving things like this?”  
  
“W-what? It’s not like they’re our friends.”  
  
“That’s right. We don’t have friends.” 

They both agreed. Then, Togami stood up a little too fast. “I was thinking of going on a bike ride.” 

  
“I d-don’t know how to ride a bike. W-we’ll have to share the same seat, and I’ll wrap my arms around you and cling to your back the entire time.”  
  
“Are you just pretending not to know?”  
  
“I would n-never.”  
  
Yes.  
She wanted to marry him.  
She wanted to go together on bicycles to see waterfalls framed in green leaves. 

Togami agreed to the second thing at least. The snow had melted enough that they could bike together on the paths. Togami’s long legs pedaled, while she hung off of him, clinging to him tightly and trying to maintain her balance.  
  
She didn’t know what was colder, the cool winter air or Togami.  
She could see her breath.  
Her cheeks were already starting to become numb.  
She wore the scarf that Togami had given back to her. (After she stole it).

They finally reached the train station.  
Toko said earlier, Makoto might have to choose between the rest of his class and one girl.  
She saw them wrapped together in a blanket.  
He chose the girl.  
Makoto’s stabbing injury hadn’t been as bad as it seemed.  
Lucky duck.  
  
A boy reached his hand out to her and asked her to run away with him.  
Even when she failed to take it the first time, he didn’t give up on her.  
Mukuro couldn't have her normal life.  
Makoto couldn’t go back if he went with her.  
Yet, after being passed over in favor of her sister her entire life.  
After loving her sister far more than she loved herself.  
There was finally someone who loved Mukuro. The boy had given her heart back and now they shared it between them. Mukuro who didn’t need anyone but her sister and Makoto wasn’t needed. She had to watch somebody else’s fairy tale ending play out in front of her. Whatever. Toko wasn’t jealous. That’s a lie she was.  
  
He had his arms wrapped around her, holding her as if he never wanted to let go. Togami and Toko approached from behind without even a hello. Makoto brought a finger to his lips, because Mukuro had finally fallen asleep.   
  
“Are you idiots? Are you seriously idiots? Running away and eloping even though they’re in high school," Toko said.   
  
"We're not really eloping. We're running away from the law. I guess that's kind of the same thing."   
  
"This is going to end just like the graduate. It's going to get awkward five minutes after you get on that train-”  
  
"Remember that talk we had about shutting up sometimes?" 

Makoto's smile was as friendly as ever.   
Since when did he suddenly grow a spine?  
  
“There’s our Toko. In love with love. Full of sunshine and rainbows. Aren’t you?” Togami said, dry with sarcasm.  
  
“Of course. Th-that’s why you love me so much.”  
  
“I don’t.” 

“Say goodbye, Toko. That’s why we came here.”  
  
“Why? I n-never even liked them that much anyway.” 

Togami just stepped on her foot. Fool. That kind of rough play was only going to turn her on. She brought her fingers to her scarf and covered her mouth.  
She was afraid to say it so she whispered it just as the train pulled away. They didn't hear her. It was more like a prayer, or maybe a wish.   
Goodbye.  
Good luck.  
  
She had made friends and she lost them. She had fallen in love, confessed, and gotten rejected. It was almost like she was slowly becoming a normal high school girl. She felt herself slowly unwinding, like all of the knots inside of her were coming undone. All of the knots weren't as hard to untie as she thought they were. She touched her cold cheeks. She hadn’t even realized.  
  
The tears that had stopped for her so long ago.  
Finally fell. 

This felt so much different than falling in love.

But it wasn’t bad.   
  
**THE PAGES ARE ALL BLANK FROM HERE.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My major influences for this fic were Zaregoto, vol. 2 Strangulation Romanticist (of which I referenced a shit ton of times), Fight Club, and Mr. Robot. 
> 
> I also read, Paul Coelho's Veronika decides to Die, Joanne Greeneberg's I Never Promised you a Rose Garden, Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the night. I just thought I'd recommend them because they're all good books.


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